


Right Number

by AsbestosMouth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Abuse of Whatsapp for sexual purposes, All hail the Seven Kingdoms Agricultural Board!, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anxiety, Brienne is the friend we all need, Dick Pics, Drinking, Drunk Texting, F/F, F/M, Family Issues, Flail Willas flail!, Fluff and Humor, Gen, If you're that rich you're merely eccentric, In a manner of speaking, Insomnia, M/M, Phone Sex, Play Guess The Wilding, Porn With Plot, Sex, Sexting, office politics, stupid sexy Dornishmen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-10 21:17:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8939698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsbestosMouth/pseuds/AsbestosMouth
Summary: Willas Tyrell exists to work, drink wine to forget work, and tries to avoid the machinations of his loving grandmother. He's got no time for all that relationship rubbish; he's a busy man after all, saving the rare breeds of Westeros one cow at a time. He's desperately trying to sleep when he gets the Whatsapp message. The one with the dick pic. The one that wasn't actually meant for him.But. Hey. What happens when a wrong number actually turns out to be the right one?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting on my computer for about six months now, and I've finally managed to get around to polishing it up and posting it. 
> 
> I've always loved that in book canon, Oberyn and Willas are really good friends despite Oberyn being the reason that Willas is disabled. They write to each other, and share interests - especially in breeding horses, dogs, and hawks. I'm therefore slightly obsessed with the different ways that modern Oberyn and Willas could communicate. Hence this fic. Because, dammit, you know Oberyn would be sending dick pics and sexts to his numerous conquests.
> 
> Probably the porniest thing I've written for, like, a decade or so. Oberyn's fault. He encourages me, the horrible enabler that he is.

* * *

 

 

**_1.22am._ **

 

Somewhere, in the up-and-coming and mostly gentrified area of King’s Landing known to the general populace as Flea Bottom - even if the developers are desperately pushing for the district to be renamed Rhaenys’ Hill, because that sounds more appealing to the monied home buyer wishing for a convenient city-based location near to the Red Keep - Willas Tyrell slumbers.

 

He gets perhaps four or five hours per night; not because he is one of those people that can function upon such a short spurt of rest, but mostly because he sits up every so often, terrified and sweating, thinking about what hells Stannis Baratheon has in store for him the next day. In bed by eleven, awake at twelve thirty for quarter of an hour of frantic worrying. Twelve forty five sees him basically pass out, dribble all over the high thread count cotton he treats himself to because he is the sort of man who lives for the tiniest of pleasures outside of his fascinating but bone-grindingly fiendish job. Two o’clock comes and goes, and by two thirty he is up once more, often with a soothing mug of warm milk and cinnamon, a spoon of sugar for indulgence, staring sightlessly at a report about breakthroughs in IVF and artificial insemination in the Reach Redpoll cow.

 

That, sadly, doesn’t bore him as much as others may think and hope.

 

By four he tries to snuggle down again, staring at the sadistic red flicker of his alarm clock that is set for six am. Every time the numbers change, he feels the growing dread of another day in the offices of the Seven Kingdoms Agricultural Board - unappealing acronymed SKAB for short. If that were his only hurdle, would be acceptable. Willas loves his job as much as he loves the animals he encounters, or the farmers who know of his reputation and how he ended up using a cane, or on bad days, his chair, or the one member of his family who doesn’t badger him about working.

 

Apparently being the heir of what boils down to a kingdom, even though the petty kings of Westeros haven’t existed in two hundred years, means that one should not sully one’s delicate hands with that employment malarky.

 

Margaery, who is strong-willed and delightful, though selfishly aware of her beauty and charm, conspires with him to upset Grandmother and Father. It is strange to think that Loras is considered a better son these days, even if all he does is loaf about, spend far too much money, and sleep with a large variety of highly attractive and very unsuitable boys.

 

Gap years. Loras takes full advantage. He’s in Essos at the moment, in Meereen, and says he’s never coming home. He will do, when the money runs low, and he’s slept with the entire city.

 

Willas never had a traditional gap year. He was working on a sheep farm in the North, up to his eyeballs on painkillers and tea, and having the best twelve months of his life covered in shit, stinking of lanolin. The first time he put his hand up an ewe in distress and helped her birth her single but bloody enormous male lamb made him cry, overwhelmed with a genuine feeling of actually being useful.

 

By six in the morning he is usually awake, or fitfully sleeping thirty second bursts, waiting for the screaming shrillness of his alarm to drag him from the fog in which he exists.

 

But now it is 1.22am, and Willas is flat on his stomach, like a starfish, dribbling into his pillow.

 

Peace. Quiet. Sleep.

 

* * *

 

**_1.23am._ **

 

His phone vibrates, the absolute electronic sadist that it is, bounces across the bedside table, lands squarely on his head.

 

The reaction demonstrates the sort of man Willas Tyrell is because a) he doesn’t immediately swear and b) he doesn’t throw the bloody phone across the bloody room. If he does fling the damned thing, it is always at something soft, like the bed, or a cushion, and he races to check to see if anything is broken. As a child he kept his toys immaculate, until Loras came along, like a three year old dervish of destruction. His little brother can trash things just by standing still and looking cheerful.

 

“Blllfioehgrlll!”

 

A pale hand gropes, finds the device - always Android. He doesn’t trust Apple. He likes having a wider range of phones to pore over when the new models come out, because, at heart, Willas is an enormous geek. Quick press of a thumb and he blearily looks at the Whatsapp message.

 

Boggles, open mouthed and horribly jerked from sleep.

 

Holy Mother of Dragons!

 

The number is one that he doesn’t recognise, which is actually rather great, because if this was from someone he knew, then Willas could never ever face them again.

 

**_1.23: Thought you might like this. Sweet dreams._ **

 

Which is a lovely sentiment.

 

However, the picture of the penis - no, erect and rather excitable penis - isn’t quite as lovely.

 

Well, it is. That is indeed an impressively handsome penis, as they go. Willas has seen two, close up, in his twenty eight years of existence, that weren’t his own, or those of family members. Sometimes, guiltily, he will browse the internet and observe men wielding them, because he is gay. Not like Loras, who sleeps with everyone he can get his beautifully manicured hands on, but secretive and a little embarrassedly gay. Monk-like gayness, he thinks, because two penises in his twenty eight years is quite a low number, and people do say he is nice looking, especially when he isn’t covered in cow dung or has his arm up a heifer. He says he’s picky, but with chronic sleep problems and chronic Stannis Baratheon issues, Willas hasn’t got the energy for a healthy sex session, let alone one of those boyfriend things that seem so popular these days.

 

He squints, rubbing at his eyes, which only helps sharpen the rampant erection staring out from his phone screen. Willas likes going for the larger model of handset, but he has a horrible feeling that the six inch screen isn’t doing justice to the rigid member standing proud and, well, gleaming.

 

It would be rude not to examine the picture further.

 

Willas is not a rude man.

 

He is also very very awake.

 

From what he can ascertain, the person is tanned, and dark-haired - there is a trail leading up from the main, neatly trimmed, action, to the slash of a navel. A hint of lean muscle tenses in the lower abdomen, and that v-shaped groove from hipbone to pelvis suggests someone who is rather fit. In all senses of the word.

 

Oh dear.

 

Wriggling, sitting up, ignoring the spike of interest in his stomach and the dull throb of his damaged leg, he knows he must text back. Whoever this is, they deserve to know that they’ve send a ‘dick pic’ as Loras refers to such, and thinking on it little brother probably sends and receives many such photographs, to the incorrect number.

 

**_1.37: Hi. u sent this 2 a wrong number i am sorry :(_ **

 

He presses send, wraps the duvet around him, flops back down. Even if he is a little aroused, because it is a very handsome penis, and the person attached to it seems equally as attractive, Willas is far too knackered and sleep-deprived to have a quick wank.

 

Just as sleep threatens to overwhelm once more, when he is all cosy and warm, the damned phone goes. Once more.

 

“Of for the love of-”

 

**_1.43:  I apologise for the intrusion. It seems that the person I wished to message has entered their number incorrectly into my phone. Please accept my sincere apologies._ **

 

Very polite, and well-spelled. What a decent sort of person.

 

Moments later, a second buzz.

 

**_1.44: Did you like the picture?_ **

 

Willas stares at the message, neat little letters on the grey-pale screen.

 

Perhaps not so decent.

 

**_1.47: I am tryin 2 sleep sorry :(_ **

 

The moment he sends it, Willas curses himself for slipping into apologising for something that isn’t his fault. He always does it, always has, always will. Even if aliens invade Westeros, and slaughter every man, child, and woman, and they are pointing their laser ray guns at his neck, asking if he has any last words for posterity, Willas would say sorry for being inconvenient.

 

**_1: 54 Sweet dreams for a sweet-mannered person. Good night._ **

 

Which is really nice, but it is now almost two am, and his sleep schedule is horribly screwed over, and Willas considers suffocating himself with his pillow just to get some rest.

 

* * *

 

“You look like shit, Tyrell.” Clegane eyes him. How the man wears so much leather and denim in the workplace Willas has never quite been able to understand. There are dress codes, but Sandor ignores all of them. He turns up in muddy workboots, and jeans, and a battered leather jacket, sporting a range of black t-shirts. Or just the one. If he has a range, they are all exactly the same cut, style, and make.

 

Clegane has the one job that Willas would cheerfully kill for, and since the man is a good nine inches taller than him, murder really could never happen.

 

“Bad night.”

 

Clegane does to horses what Willas does to cows and what Bolton does to dogs.

 

Which makes it sound really bad, but since they all work in artificial insemination and the protection of ancient breeding lines of the three species, it isn’t as bad as it could be.

 

Though he doesn’t trust Bolton. No one does. He’s just creepy.

 

“What are you up to today?” Politely, as the lift chugs skywards with the tiniest of movements.

 

“Pissing off Stannis, then goin’ to see some foals.”

 

“The usual, then.”

 

“You?”

 

“Reports.”

 

“Poor cunt.”

 

“I like doing them,” Willas offers weakly, only to be met with a sardonic snort.

 

“Bolton’s on the warpath. Avoid if you want to fuckin’ live.”

 

“What about now?”

 

“Everything.” Enigmatically. “Nothin’. Who gives a shit?”

 

“Good point.”

 

The lift asthmatically wheezes to their destination; a long forgotten and heavily neglected part of the Red Keep that serves the bit of government that everyone pretends doesn’t actually exist. The thought of upstanding officials masturbating animals for a living is not quite palatable to the general populace. In the department stand the vast freezers storing the rare breed semen and DNA analyses, and Stannis Baratheon and his meticulously kept files.

 

Bolton stalks past, wearing more black and more leather than even Clegane. He has bruising across one eye and a particularly sadistic expression.

 

Normality, therefore, reigns in their tiny office.

 

“Good morning, Ramsay.”

 

Willas is rewarded for his politeness with a snap of sharp little teeth, a snarl, and then, thankfully, Bolton plunges into the stockroom, probably to find a secretary to staple to a filing cabinet.

 

“Good morning, Mr. Tyrell.” Stannis, who purposely has the desk closest to the office door so he can keep a beady blue eye on everything, is always polite in the manner of a very stressed, very clever, very anal retentive man. He, like Willas, is old-school in shirt, tie, and suit, though his clothing is perfectly pressed, scrupulously clean, and his shoes gleam in the way of the polished every evening after work.

 

“Good morning, ser.”

 

“I need to discuss fisheries with you. Seaworth has been carping on,” and Willas wonders if his boss is aware that he’s made a pun, and smiles politely in case of the answer being yes or no, “about how we devote our time to mammals and ignore the need for possible fish stock crises. The man is an absolute menace. Whoever put him in charge of the bloody fishing union needs harpooning.“

 

Why him? Why Willas, who has more work than Clegane and Bolton put together?

 

Oh, yes. Because he’s the only one who actually seems to know what goes on with the science behind their AI/IVF programme. Sandor is a stockman, marvellous with animals, but is more hands-on than academic. Bolton has a degree in the right subject area but, legend has it, actually bit someone once. No one knows who, or where, or why, but the rumour has made its way around the entire Red Keep and people prefer to keep their distance from the man who resembles one of those bull terriers he loves.

 

Rumour has it that Ramsay Bolton has titanium weapon-grade tooth implants and a locking jaw. Or he is the King’s Landing serial killer. Or that he has a pet gimp.

 

None of these would be surprising if they were true.

 

“I will find a slot in my diary, ser.”

 

“There is one. Meeting with Seaworth at 3.15pm this afternoon.”

 

“Fucking brown-nosing cunt,” Clegane murmurs, pleasantly, as Willas curls into his computer chair, hooks his cane in the usual place, and boots his PC.

 

His phone goes, and he pulls it from his man bag, the one Margie bought him, the one with the DNA of cow semen beautifully embossed into the leather, putting it on his desk.

 

Whatsapp. He opens it, idly.

 

**_8.26: I hope you slept and I did not keep you up all night. You never said if you liked the picture, though I think you may have considering that I am not blocked from your Whatsapp. I wonder if your mouth is as polite as your messaging. I wonder if you have a pretty mouth. In my mind it is a very lovely mouth indeed._ **

 

Every drop of blood in Willas’ body goes straight to his head, and he has to loosen his tie lest he accidentally strangle himself. Everything burns. Ears. Cheeks. Nose. Eyeballs. For a single paranoid second he wonders if everyone is staring at him, and he checks above his monitor, like a meerkat, but no; Clegane is punching his PC tower, Bolton is stalking about muttering to himself, and Stannis, rigid-backed, is arguing with someone on the other end of the telephone.

 

**_8.28: r u flirtin w/me? U dont kno me._ **

 

**_8.29: Despite your appalling text speak, yes. How thrilling. Did you delete that photo?_ **

 

No. He hasn’t. Hasn’t got round to it, hasn’t looked at it several times, has totally ignored the existence of it. Honest. Willas wonders if his blood pressure could cause his brain to explode, like a faulty pressure cooker.

 

**_8.41: You haven’t, have you? So very naughty. Considering I sent you one, and you seem to be keeping it, I request one in return._ **

 

Oh Gods. Oh Gods. He is being flirted with by a complete stranger who wants to receive a photo of his penis. But then, is he asking for a penis? Perhaps he thinks Willas is a woman, given that propensity for smileys? He did send smileys, didn’t he? And what about the person this person was supposed to send his straining, glorious erection photo to? Can an erection be glorious? He’d check the photo again, to make sure, but he’s in work, in an office with a psychopath, a man who wrestles horses for a living, and the man with the biggest stick up his arse in the Red Keep, and it would be highly inappropriate.

 

What if there are cameras? He could get sacked. He could get fired for looking at pornography at work. Oh Gods.

 

Right. Need to stop this. He has a nice picture out of it, that he may or may not save to that special hidden folder in his phone that Willas keeps his more interesting internet finds. Right, he’ll say he’s a man, and apologise, and everything will be fine. His trousers will calm down, his own body will stop being so fascinated by that photo, and everything will be alright.

 

**_8.58: i am sorry :( im a man. Sorry u got rong number. Will dleet ur photo. Sorry._ **

 

**_9.04: I am sitting here waiting for a photo, and your gender is of no worry to me. I am quite fluid in my desire for the beautiful and the interesting. You do not have to delete what I sent. Consider it a gift for waking you from your slumber. I have never met someone so polite before whilst chatting. Just to check that you are over the age of eighteen - I would hate for there to be any legal issues._ **

 

Willas panics, flails silently, turns his phone off with a shaking thumb, and retreats into paperwork.

 

* * *

 

Seaworth turns out to be far nicer than his fearsome leftie unionist reputation. He went out on strike with the miners in the ‘80s, was arrested for campaigning for nuclear disarmament and spent six months in prison for public disorder. Apparently he accidentally bashed a policeman over the head with a particularly weighty placard while trying to save a lost labrador puppy from being stamped to death by a maddened police horse.

 

“Mr. Seaworth, this is Mr. Tyrell. He is my office expert on breeding.”

 

Willas hates it when Stannis calls him that. Makes him sound like a stud for hire.

 

“Lovely to meet you, Mr. Tyrell. Bit formal, that is - is it alright if I call you by your first name?” Seaworth offers a hand, and Willas shakes it. Mace always impressed upon his family the importance of a good firm handshake, and had them practice with him. When they finally got to the point where they could bear the pressure of their father’s hand crushing theirs, and could squeeze back without their broken bones complaining too much, he deemed them acceptable to be unleashed in public.

 

“Willas, ser.”

 

“Call me Davos, lad.” Davos, which suits him more than Mr. Seaworth, is quite ordinary, though he has a lovely kind smile and strangely mutilated fingers on his left hand. He is dressed far more casually than they are, in an open necked checked shirt and cord trousers, a variety of badges on the lapel of an old tweed jacket hanging over the back of a chair proclaiming support for the Labour Party, CND, Go Fish - the grass-roots campaign calling for assistance to the dying fishing industry - and various, mostly militant, trade unions.

 

“We will come straight to the point.” Stannis paces as Willas pours coffee, hands it over, wrangles the packet of biscuits into a plate. “We are overworked and understaffed at the AI/IVF office, yet you wish to involve us in this ludicrous fish farm scheme-”

 

“It isn’t a fish farm,” Seaworth points out. “It is the sustained raising of young fish, in order to release them back into the wild.”

 

“Fish,” Stannis intones, “are not like badgers, or squirrels, or hawks. We cannot captive breed stock to such an extent.”

 

“But you can.” Davos, who Willas really likes, because he seems to fluster Stannis just by being there - something to do with hard-bitten union types makes Baratheon very twitchy - taps his maimed fingers upon a beautifully bound dossier. It has a fish on the front, which looks suspiciously Tully about the gills. “It’s all in this, if you want to have a look. Already we have to rely on imported Essosian stock, which is never as good quality, especially the farmed side of things. What we need to do, like you’ve done with cattle and other animals, is instill into the public about buying Westerosi. I think it’s now about eighty percent of milk and beef products are local, or at least, from this continent?”

 

Willas nods. “Yes, ser. Sorry. Davos. Since we’re bringing back the old breeds and the public have that in their consciousness, they are more than willing to spend an extra dragon or two on livestock that is traceable through the system and has the necessary welfare behind it, than on meat products that might be less that optimum. Animal welfare and ethics is a massive issue at the moment.”

 

“See, that’s what we need with the fish. There’s nothing better than a free-ranging salmon caught with a line off Bear Island, fresh-frozen the moment it comes from the water, in the markets the next day, on the plate the day after that.” A strange, dreamy look overtakes Davos, and Willas revises his first impression. Ordinary, but attractive because he cares about things. Deeply. He probably has a million children, and gives all his spare cash to Worthy Causes. “But more than that, we can help the fishermen themselves, and their families. We can make the industry a protected interest.”

 

“And how much will that cost, exactly?” Stannis is, always, the great jackboot of reason and financial stinginess, squashing the burgeoning flame of hope and goodness.

 

“Less than it’d be to pay everyone in the industry off when it goes arse over tit, Stannis. You know that.”

 

At that moment, Willas decides he’d marry Davos Seaworth. No one ever speaks to Baratheon like that, and for a moment it looks as if the man will smack the union leader in the face, but angry blue eyes meet warm calm brown, and Stannis grinds his teeth instead.

 

“And stop grinding your teeth.” Davos is definitely a Dad. That’s a Dad voice.

 

“I am not grinding my teeth!”

 

“You are. I can see your jaw working. Stop it.”

 

A death glare from his boss towards Davos, but Stannis does, for the first time ever, in the history of Willas being in the department, what he is told.

 

“I’ll leave this with you, in Willas’ capable hands, and if there’s any issue at all, lad, just email or ring. All my info is in there, in the back.”

 

* * *

 

Bolton nips out for a quick smoke at around four pm, and then returns with a Vale Bull Terrier that he calls Myranda, who curls up under his desk and falls asleep. She snores like a pneumatic drill, and leaves a trail of tiny pinprick black hairs over the entire office. From a distance she looks like a toast rack on legs.

 

It is the first time anyone has ever seen Ramsay being nice to anything. He sits on the floor, strokes her sad-eared black head, tells her she is beautiful and perfect and Daddy loves her very much.

 

Clegane and Willas just stare at each other.

 

“Why the fuck is there a dog in the office?”

 

“Because.” Ramsay sneers, weird pale eyes full of malice and hate and death threats. He and Clegane are millimeters away from murdering each other on a daily basis.

 

“She’s very pretty,” Willas offers, even if the dog is as ugly as any other. He is more a cat person. Myranda seems a little moth-eaten and mangy around the peripherals.

 

“She’s a beautiful girl. Oh yes she is, isn’t she? Myrri is a beautiful baby girl, and so clever, and so pretty, and Daddy loves her so very much, yes he do-”

 

“Fuck’s sake, Bolton. Fucking creepy cunt even when you’re trying to be not fucking creepy.” Clegane states the truth, at all times, because he is that sort of man. Sandor comes complete with a ridiculously pretty, rich, adorable girlfriend, a foul temper, and the sort of face that makes a person nervous. Not that he is as terrifying as Bolton, who is murder, death, and sadism distilled into a far smaller package, which makes him far more dangerous. And bitey. Very bitey.

 

“Don’t you listen to the ugly bastard, baby girl. Daddy’ll flay him for you, so pretty, and then you can eat his face. Wanna eat a face for Daddy, sweetie?”

 

“Where did you get her?” Best to intervene.

 

“Beric found her at the temple. Didn’t he? Uncle Beric found you, and he said ‘we must take you to Ramsay, so he can love you,’ and then turned up when I was having a fag.”

 

“Beric Dondarrion?”

 

For a moment Bolton looks both shifty and nervous, before his usual belligerence re-emerges. “Red Priest bitch that he is.”

 

How Bolton knows a Red Priest, or at least a man who works with the Red Priests as a secular advisor and PR consultant to the order, to the point where Dondarrion knows where to bring stray dogs, he doesn’t know, or want to know. Something about R’hllor worshippers is a little too out of the comfort zone for Willas, who, like most, is a devotee of the Seven. Not that he goes to the sept every Sunday, or any Sunday, because he’s either working, having to visit family, or trying to sleep. It is just a thing, like being a Tyrell, or from the Reach.

 

“What are you going to do with her?” The dog pants, ribs heaving, ridiculously huge tongue lolling to the point where it drags on the carpet. She is quite small for her breed, and seems to be peppered in scars. Silently Willas fishes in his man bag for the remnants of his sandwich, offers it to Bolton who strips it down, removing any lettuce, before feeding Myranda the meat and crusts.

 

“Roose took my dogs when I moved down,” Bolton says, a tiny crack in his voice. “This one’s staying with me. Aren’t you, baby? Yes you are. So pretty. So good. Daddy’s little puppy. Because Uncle Beric says I must keep you, because you’re so beautiful and precious, a precious puppy that Daddy loves, yes you are. We’re going to make people so sorry for hurting you, aren’t we? We’re going to flay the bitches for making you sad, baby girl, we are. We’re going to skin them alive and make them scream. Oh yes we are.”

 

Clegane’s right. Only Ramsay could make sweet nothings towards a dog really bloody creepy.

 

* * *

 

**_19.04: im over 18 so u dont need 2 worry_ **

 

**_19.41: Good. Such a shame if you were not, for you are quite fascinating. Most would have told me to desist from my contacting them, or would have blocked me. You, however, prove more robust than most. What are you up to? I am contemplating a most excellent Dornish red. Slight acidity but a rich claret depth that makes it morish._ **

 

**_19.56: got homr from work long day. Dont want 2 cook ugh. Mite have wine 4 dinner instead w/Pot Noodle._ **

 

**_20.02: Such a late hour to be arriving home._ **

 

**_20.04: boss iz a slavedriver an i got 2 research fish :( fish are ok but boring_ **

 

**_20:18 Perhaps this shall give you good cheer, my little fish researching friend?_ **

 

Willas drops his Pot Noodle, all over his lap. Thankfully it wasn’t boiling hot.

 

Another pic, of, well, it really is a handsome penis. The hand wrapped around it is long-fingered, strong, almost elegant, with the same olive tan as the stomach has. As the pelvis has.

 

Oh.

 

Mystery dick pic man must sunbathe naked, because he cannot see a tan line for love nor money. Naked and gleaming, and his brain screams that there is oil involved, and with that really quite beautiful part of him for the world to see. Considering he is shamelessly sending these photos to someone he’s never met before, then he probably wanders around in the nude, all glistening and gorgeous, with his hips and hands and genitalia.

 

**_20:22: I can send you a video if you so wish?_ **

 

**_20.24: I keep imagining what you must look like. Delightful, my mind tells me. A sweet delightful man with awful spelling and the urge to apologise for things that he has no right apologising for._ **

 

**_20.26: Is this not erotic? Complete strangers that we are, bound by nothing but from a messaging service and a peculiar circumstance._ **

 

**_20.29: Perhaps you shall send me a photo, such as what I have sent? Will you be long and slender, or shorter, thicker? Mouth watering, I am sure. I believe you are younger than I, for your writing style suggests a youthfulness that I no longer possess. How delightful. How I could teach you the ways of sin, with my mouth, my fingers, my body. Shivering and eager under me as I pleasure you, worship you, devour every part of your body with my lips and tongue. If I know what you look like, what your body is like, I can imagine you more accurately. I can imagine your flesh, and how your taste, and how your accent changes your whimpers of pleasure into something entirely unique. How your hair feels in my hands as I plunder your mouth. How your breath hitches as I take you utterly, with pleasure, driving us both to the insanity of completion. Ah, to see you undone, my mystery!_ **

 

The orgasm that Willas has, after he has fled to the shower because he is that fastidious sort of man, is possibly the best he’s ever had in his entire life.

 

It hits him, after coming down, wrapped in a fluffy robe and still damp, that this is really bizarre. What sort of man sends another a picture of his fulsome member, gets a wrong number, and then just...goes with it? He’s sure that if he’d said to stop, or that he wasn’t interested, the mystery man would have apologised, and it would have been fine. He doesn’t come across as creepy.

 

But then, given that Willas’ base-level of creepy defaults to Ramsay Bolton, perhaps he is quite off on the creep-o-meter? Maybe his meter is very much broken indeed? Perhaps this is quite weird, and people don’t do this, and he’s just damaged after working with a psychopath who loves dogs rather than people?

 

He sips his wine, Arbour Gold obviously because the Tyrells own the vineyard, because if anything, this situation calls for a lot of wine, and dials a number.

 

* * *

_Heya hun, what’s up?_

 

_Margie, have you got a moment to speak?_

 

_Of course. I’m just watching trash TV and eating truffles. Bronn says hi, by the way. He’s giving me a foot massage. You need someone to give you a foot massage, Wil, you’re totally missing out on human contact and the benefits it brings._

 

_You sound like Olenna._

 

_She would be so proud._

 

_I’ve got a bit of a problem. It’s...weird._

 

_Ooh, favourite sort. Go on._

 

_There’s this man-_

 

_Ohhh! Tell!_

 

_I’ve not met him, I’ve no idea who he is, or anything. Apart from, Gods, this is really going to be hard to say, okay? So please don’t comment, because I have to get it out before I lose my bottle, right? Um. He sent me a Whatsapp photo. Of his, uh...penis-_

 

_Ohhh-! Dick pic? Tell me ab-!_

 

_No, Margie! Let me finish! He sent me it, and it was for someone else, and I told him that, and then he apologised, and then asked me if I liked it, and now he’s messaging me with all these ideas of what he wants to do to me, and I said I was a man, and he doesn’t mind, and he sent me another picture of his bits, and now he’s threatening to send a video._

 

_Is it upsetting you, or making up feel uncomfortable in a bad sort of way?_

 

_No. He’s quite nice looking. At least, his penis is._

 

_Deeetails, brother of mine. I need these so badly right now._

 

_Margie!_

 

_Oh come on! I won’t tell Loras, even though he’d be so jealous at you having a hot guy sending you photos and porn._

 

_Oh for...Fine! Okay! It’s big. I don’t think a six inch screen does it justice, if you know what I mean? He’s all, I don’t know. Tanned, and has this really nice set of lower abs, and gorgeous hands. He’s older than me, I think. I think he gets off on the idea of me being young and naive._

 

_He’s not a-?_

 

_No. Asked if I was over 18 and was happy to hear I was._

 

_Then what’s the problem? Live a little, Willas! Have you returned a dick pic yet?_

 

_No!_

 

_Oh that poor man._

 

_...should I? Really? Oh Gods._

 

_Totally. You want him to keep talking, don’t you? Otherwise you’d not have rung me, and you’d have blocked him._

 

_Is it wrong though? I mean, he could be a stalker for all I know?_

 

_All he knows is your number. C’mon, big brother. Have some fun for once in your life, do something a little bit reckless._

 

_Fine. Fine. Thanks, sis._

 

_No problem. By the way, if you take from slightly underneath, your cock’ll look bigger._

 

_...what? How do you even know tha-?_

 

 _Going now. Love you, hun. Bye!_ _  
_

 

* * *

 


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

 

 

It takes him two days to take a photo, because Willas is nothing but a perfectionist, and he prefers to wait until the weekend so he can get a good photography session in. He uploads the shot onto his home PC, accesses Photoshop, and plays with lighting levels and contrast until he is satisfied. 

 

How strange it is to see his own genitalia like this. He’s never seen his body from this angle, and, it seems, Margaery’s advice about making everything look more impressive does work. Willas isn’t in possession of the largest tool in the box, but with careful angles, he looks quite a healthy size. Pale, yes, and the bits of his body that can be seen look thin, and there are those moles and freckles, but it isn’t bad, as penises go. He can send it with hope, anyway. It isn’t ugly, or a strange discoloured weirdness, and everything is in the correct order and manner.

 

He swallows, takes a deep breath, and sends. This feels so bizarre.

 

Oh Gods. He’s just send a picture of his erect cock to mystery dick pic man. Who may or may not be really attractive.

 

The messages are such that they send him into meltdown now, and Willas can’t even read them at work. He considers that he now has a Pavlov reaction to the Whatsapp message alert in as much as his trousers tighten with every ping that tells him that he’s been contacted.

 

This is mad. This is total madness. Foolishness. Idiocy.

 

Five minutes pass.

 

Why hasn’t the man replied? Where is he?

 

He waits, then browses the internet for a little while which turns into an all-day wander around Wikipedia, finds the energy to cook something vaguely edible for dinner, then sits down in front of the television, phone on the arm of his chair, to mindlessly watch Saturday night trash.

 

What if he’s scared the man off with his boring, normal, run-of-the-mill penis? What if mystery dick pic man, who seems the sort to be  _ au fait _ with many sets of genitals, thinks his is too average to bother with? What if there are no more long, details messages about the variety of things he wants to do to Willas, many of which he has to look up on the internet to understand?

 

The alert sings, and he flails back to consciousness, covered in his own saliva, glass of wine slightly too warm. He’s lost an hour and a half to dreams filled with Bolton, Clegane, and giant penises attacking from outer space. Stannis Baratheon turns out to be a Jedi, and Davos smacks them all down with an overly large codfish.

 

**_00.13: If I knew where you lived, delicious one, I would be on my knees before you in a moment. Pale and pretty and so very lovely. I stroked myself to completion twice with your kind offering, I shall show you._ **

 

Just a short video clip, taken on a webcam, and Willas can see a little more of that fantastic lean muscled torso, and strong thighs, and the way...oh by the Seven, he’s not just masturbating, he’s using his fingers in himself, and there is sound, and he’s moaning, deep and throaty and masculine, and when he comes it is all over his phone handset where Willas’ own erection strains backlit and bright.

 

It takes a minute or two, and another frantic replay, for him to realise he’s climaxed, hands-free, in his trousers.

 

**_0.20: oh my god_ **

 

**_0.21: i just this is mad u r mad bloody hell_ **

 

**_0.22: got 2 go clean up now_ **

 

**_0.23: Did you touch yourself for me? I’d love to watch you pleasure your beautiful body._ **

 

**_0.32: cum w/out touchin just wantch u doin that w/ur fingers_ **

 

**_0.35: It is better to give and receive, than to go without utmost pleasure. Fingers are enjoyable. Tongues even more so. Have you ever had someone make love to you with their tongue? Slick muscle eager and hungry, opening you to ready you for something hard, and desperate, and needy. Perhaps I can make you climax from that alone? Perhaps I shall watch you come undone as you moan my name and beg for me to possess you completely?_ **

 

**_0.39: ur gonna kill me :(_ **

 

**_0.40: No sad faces. I refuse sad faces, for I have seen your lovely cock. That is a happy face matter, indeed._ **

 

**_0.41: Have you wondered if we should meet? I am afraid that I would drag you to bed the moment I saw you, lest I push you into an alley and have you against a wall. Which, on reflection, would be most exciting, but how am I to explore you if you are not naked and sprawled on a bed? Alleyways can wait._ **

 

**_0.47: i dont even no ur name or where ur from or nothin or age or u kno. stuff._ **

 

**_0.49: My name is something I shall not divulge, but I am from Dorne. I am in my early forties._ **

 

**_0.51: ur in ur 40s? thought u were younger u look younger ur body is wow! :)_ **

 

**_0.54: Divine flattery, and a smiling face. I think this is a first? Am I very much older than you, who is a mystery?_ **

 

**_0.55: im 28 so a bit but not really old. from the reach but livin in kings landin 4 work which i love but its really hard work w/animals_ **

 

**_0.56: cows lots of cows!_ **

 

**_0.59: I breed horses, myself - sand steeds are a speciality, especially those of Viper lineage. Such excellent stamina and confirmation. Others think I should concentrate upon size, but the ancient Dornes did not wish for the over-large beasts that the rest of the Kingdoms desired._ **

 

**_1.07: size isnt anything_ **

 

**_1.08: just made myself laugh there :D_ **

 

**_1.09: have u registered w/the AI/IVF people they have good semen stores w/older lines that mite help? got blood of nymeria and all sorts i cn ask my colleague for more info if u want?_ **

 

**_1.12: can send u the link if ur not joined? clegane deals w/horses, he’s good w/them but a bit scary_ **

 

**_1.15: The name seems familiar? Large, muscled, beautiful broad shoulders, scarred face? Rough but tempting, in equal measure? Yes, he is very good. I have met him, if that is the man you mean?_ **

 

**_1.16: Just a moment I must be sensible. If you are not careful, my mystery boy from the capital, I shall easily know your name, and I am aware that might be a little far for you to venture? You are an open book, and that is delightful, though I counsel you towards care. Who knows with whom you may speak? The only harm I could do you is send you home aching and needy for my cock, but others may not be so kind. Be careful of what you speak about, about what you share. You are, always, safe with me, I promise._ **

 

Willas freezes. Flails. Knocks his wine over. Panics as he mops it up. Thankfully he prefers burgundy fabrics and easy clean flooring because of his clumsiness. No stains occur as he goes into meltdown.

 

**_1.29: i got to go sleep now sorry_ **

 

**_1.31: got 2 think bout this_ **

 

**_1.32: just got real. like soberin up and seein ive said stuff and done stupid things. not that i drink lots just wine but u kno._ **

 

**_1.35: sorry_ **

 

**_1.48: really am sorry bout this. not used to talkin 2 people and its all really real. bit introverted my sister says but shes all good w/people and im good w/animals and not people. sorry just a bit weirded out at the mo bout stuff. sorry u must think im a right idiot and i am just a big one sumtimes. most the time really_ **

 

**_1.56: Sleep, sweet boy. Stop panicking. I shall not use my knowledge to find your name, or where you live. I shall wait for you to give me such information, if you so wish._ **

 

**_1.57: Sleep. Go and sleep, and rest your no doubtedly pretty head. You are delightful. Part of me now wishes to sweep you into my arms and adore you, like the precious kitten that you are._ **

 

* * *

 

Bolton skulks in the stockroom, and Willas doesn’t even know until he’s searching for printer paper. Someone in the office goes through it at a ridiculous rate, almost like they’re eating the stuff. This is the second ream in six days, and they are supposed to be striving towards a paperless organisation. Stannis keeps muttering about hot desking, and clean desk policies. Clegane just stares, blankly, and stashes another Mars Bar wrapper on his enormous pile of chocolate bar coverings; his desk is a nightmare of dead pens, rubbish, a beer bottle of all things, and about sixteen photographs of his girlfriend being cute.

 

“Yeah. Fuck off, bitch.” Bolton slumps against a wall rack, phone glued to his ear, staring at the ceiling. Freezing, eyes wide and nervous, Willas flattens himself against a filing cabinet.

 

“She’s a good girl. Got her to do sit. Listens more than you do.” A pause, a strange high-pitched snort which Willas realises, with horror, is Ramsay Bolton laughing. “I’ll get you one as well. Look hot in a collar.”

 

This is bad and wrong, and he doesn’t need to be accidentally eavesdropping on a conversation between a psychopath and someone who, given the context, sounds like they are actually involved with the aforementioned psychopath. Whoever decides that Bolton is the one they want to have a relationship with, or at least have sex with, they must be either mad, just as creepy, or, more probably, both at the same time.

 

“I’ll get the tag engraved. This bitch belongs to Ramsay Bolton. If found send back to the Dreadfort for punishment.”

 

Oh. Getting worse. Really, this is bad. Very bad. If his colleague ever finds out that Willas has listened in on this conversation, well. The office at the Red Keep is very high up, and the old-fashioned sliding sash windows contravene Health and Safety directives from Varys himself. Very easy for someone, especially with a disability, to ‘accidentally’ defenestrate themselves.

 

“Red then? What’s the neck size?” Another of those weird almost snorting giggles. “Well, aren’t you fucking enormous? Not that you...no. Don’t call me short, you fucker! You’re going down, Dondarrion. You’re going on your knees and begging for forgiveness, you slut.”

 

Oh, squared. No wonder Beric Dondarrion gave Myrri to Ramsay if they are. Oh Gods, that is just so wrong. That is really really totally and utterly without doubt the wrongest of things.

 

Father Dondarrion as they call him at the Temple of R’hllor, who isn’t really a priest but acts far more holy than thou half the time, is a decent man. Or was. Before Willas heard about the shenanigans; he’s not sure how to really describe what he’s heard. The series of tragic head injuries aside, Beric is quite handsome, and his eyepatch and war medals give him the air of an army veteran turned to the Lord of Light after some disastrous event somewhere during his military career. Apparently, that involved landmines. Willas hasn’t really investigated more, but suddenly everything makes some sort of awful sense.

 

Beric Dondarrion’s head injuries mean he must be absolutely barking mad. Which explains what sounds like a really quite perverted ‘friendship’ with Bolton. With dog collars. And kneeling. For some reason that makes him relax. At least it isn’t someone normal who is contemplating doing all sorts of kinky things with Ramsay. Who knows what being blown up can do to a man?

 

He manages to quietly slip from the room as Bolton snarls into the phone, unaware of weird pale eyes watching him, glittering and death-laden.

 

“Tyrell’s finally pissed off,” he says, and Dondarrion laughs, echoing down the phone line.

 

“Next time, tell him to sod off and stop listening, rather than make him think we’re in some S&M sub/Dom relationship, Ramsay.”

 

“Just love watching bitches squirm, Dondarrion.”

 

“I think you just love traumatising people.”

 

“All that fucking money spent on your psychiatry degree, and that’s the best you can come up with?”

 

“I’ll revise that. I know you love traumatising people. You enjoy the power you have over equals and those above you on the hierarchy, because you hate your Dad.”

 

“You hate my Dad.”

 

“Everyone hates your Dad. He is the most hateworthy man in the Seven Kingdoms.”

 

“Unless you’re a leech. Leeches are people, too, according to Roosey. Like dogs. Dogs are the best people. Yeah. Just wanted to say thanks for Myrri. She’s her Daddy’s best puppy angel. Owe you one, you bitch.”

 

“Payment to the Temple as usual, Ramsay. We take credit card. Or a card from my doggy niece and a cuddle would be adequate.”

 

“....”

 

“Cuddle from Myranda, not you, Ramsay. Cuddling you would be like trying to hug a very angry box of murderous mutated wasps, armed with flaying knives.”

 

“Fuck, thought you were going gay on me then, Dondarrion.”

 

“Oh hush, we’re the straightest men in Westeros.”

 

“Apart from that one time-”

 

“We don’t mention that.”

 

“Yeah. Fuck the one time.”

 

* * *

 

**_15.08: think i mite b killed by office psycho_ **

 

**_15.15: he just made me tea. Suspicious. Hes looking at dog collars on Westernet cos his boyf wants 2 wear 1 and i was looking 4 printer paper and heard them talking bout stuff they do and i am traumatised D:D:D:_ **

 

**_15:23: You must be, pretty one. Your spelling has marginally improved. Perhaps we must have you intimidated by psychopaths on a daily basis? I shall rescue you, tear you from his lecherous arms, make love after we flee from certain peril?_ **

 

**_15.26: Are you to describe the psychopath so I may consider my fantasy of being an action hero?_ **

 

**_15.52: r is short but dont tell him he goes nuts w/it if u call him short. dark hair weird pale creepy eyes and muscly and leather. lots of leather_ **

 

**_15.56 if i tell u who i am 1 day i show u r on website?_ **

 

**_15.57: hes creepy ugh! D: his dad breeds leeches_ **

 

**_15.59: LEECHEROUS ARMS LOL! :D:D:D_ **

 

**_16.17: Your puns are atrocious, yet, sweet one, I find you adorable in your idiocy._ **

 

Someone coughs, and Willas looks up, scarlet-faced, at Stannis. His manager seems rather unamused.

 

“You have been fiddling with your device for the last fifty seven minutes,” he intones, and his choice of phrasing makes Willas’ ears turn red. “While you are in this office, Mr. Tyrell, you are to work. Not waste your time on social networking. Not contact outsiders. Not browse internet dating sites, or auctions-”

 

“Sorry. Sorry. It won’t happen again.” Mortified, he turns his phone off and goes to lock it in his desk, before Stannis holds out his hand, eyebrow arched.

 

“I shall confiscate your telephone for the rest of the afternoon.”

 

“But-”

 

“When you have thought about your actions, you shall receive your ‘phone back.” Willas can see the punctuation. Mr. Baratheon is a man who enjoys punctuation. “Until then, it shall be securely locked in my desk drawer.”

 

* * *

 

**_20.34: boss confiscated my phone 4 talking 2 u in work <:O_ **

 

**_20.35: feel like a 6 yr old :(:(:(_ **

 

Willas pours wine, because it has been that sort of day. Not only did Stannis turn worryingly head masterly and lock his phone away, but there was a slight accident with Clegane, a tube of stallion semen, and Willas’ favourite tie. The tie will never see service again. Ruined. If he were a braver man, he’d take the thing to the dry cleaners, but trying to explain the ejaculate stains - copious amounts - without making it sound like it is a) his or b) he goes around masturbating horses, or c) masturbating men would be, frankly, horrendous. Silk stains so badly. He’s put it through the washing machine with little hope, and now it sadly drips over the bath, a wreck of a once beautiful piece of neckwear.

 

**_20.45: Have you been naughty, sweet one?_ **

 

The familiar warmth curls. Willas has asked mystery dick pic man to try not to be sexually suggestive between the hours of 7am-7pm, so answering his messages at work is rather less of a lottery; he never knew if there would be a nice chatty chunk of text or, well, something rather more visual.

 

**_20.47: was answering u so maybe a bit :)_ **

 

**_20.49: Perhaps I should send something erotic during work time? Perhaps he might put you over his knee. Spank you. Would you like that, my pretty boy? An older gentleman spanking your lovely backside until you are pink and gasping? Lips parted and ripe as you ask so very politely to be taken? I would find you irresistible._ **

 

It’s going to be one of those nights. Willas swallows, apologises internally to himself because he has a terribly Faith of the Seven sense of guilt the next morning after these nights before, and downs his glass of wine. Liquid courage. He’s drinking quite a lot of it these days. The previous week saw him two whole bottles.

 

**_20.56: not stannis ugh! but u maybe. not done that bfore._ **

 

**_21.02: Ah, I will teach you the ways of the dark side, my apprentice._ **

 

**_21.08: with ur mighty lightsabre :D:D:D_ **

 

**_21.09: does it hurt? spanking i mean. Not ur lightsabre :D_ **

 

**_21.09: r u naked?_ **

 

**_21.09: im naked_ **

 

He ends up putting a little blushy emoticon there, becaose he wasn’t actually nude at that moment, but the moment he sends the message, Willas tears off his clothes. Or, at least, he does his version of that; everything folded neatly, in a pile, with no threat of creasing or sullying, even if he had only been wearing comfortable soft cotton pyjama bottoms and an old t-shirt.

 

**_21.12: I am always unclothed in the evening, unless I have company. Shall I demonstrate, you naughty boy?_ **

 

Video clip. Willas rubs his fingers over his mouth, touches the screen to play the damned/wonderful thing.

 

Yes. Naked. Very naked mystery dick pic man. The angle pans from surprisingly elegant feet with high insteps, and they are almost dancer feet, to lean ankles, well-toned and proportioned calves. Endless legs. Long, and dark-haired, and the same gorgeous olive tanned skin of the torso, then upwards. Every upwards. Strong thighs, but not overly muscled. Sleek, really. Sleek lines, and power, and narrow snake-like hips. That cock. When put into context like this, Willas realises, with a tiny whine and a certain starburst blankness behind his eyes, that his phone really didn’t do that splendid weapon any justice whatsoever.

 

Still the camera slides. Enviable muscle tone gives way to a beautifully furred chest with dark nipples. One has a piercing.

 

Willas almost dies there and then. As it is he curls up, knees under his chin, arousal thick and heavy as he quietly, without ceremony, starts touching himself.

 

Up. The man’s arms are as his legs; toned, lean, strong without being bulky. Shoulders. Throat. Upwards.

 

The camera stops, focussing on white teeth, a passionate lipped mouth, the hint of a moustache and stubble. There is a quirk of humour in the grin, a slight imperfection of a tiny chip to one of the gleaming front teeth.

 

He can’t stand it. He can’t stand the teasing, or the smirky beauty, or the impressive body of the man on the screen. He’s never seen anyone like this in his life, not even during those infrequent forays into pornography. The man is self-assured, and confident, and utterly aware of his impact. In others it could be construed as arrogance, and indeed, it is still the case with mystery dick pic man, but it seems right, and correct. He is beautiful. He is arrogant. He is the most gorgeous person Willas has ever seen in his entire life, and?

 

And the entirety of it, the incredible thing, the madness of it all? That the man is showing off, and flirting, and seducing him. A man of such quality is doing all of this - the videos, the messaging, the everything - for him.

 

“Oh Gods.”

 

He makes an executive decision, fueled with lust, hormones, and two glasses of wine, and, hand trembling, starts filming himself.

 

It is only polite, as his mysterious Whatsapp ‘boyfriend’ said, to give and receive.

 

“Um. Bugger, you’ll hear my voice. I’m a bit tipsy, and that video. Gods, that video. I don’t know your name. Just that you’re my mystery dick pic man.” He laughs, trembling and not quite sane, hand still working himself. “Also I’m filming this right handed because I just. That. Bloody hell. I can’t even talk! And I talk, I’m known for it. I babble a lot, just not much of consequence, and I’ve never done this before. Not at all. Virgin at this. Hah. But. This is me. Not like you. You’re beautiful. I bet everyone tells you that, but you are. You’re just...you filmed you for me. That’s just mad. Totally mad. I’m just normal compared to you. Skinny little Highgarden scientist, that’s me. Uh, that scar. The one on my leg? I had a horse fall on me when I was twelve. Try and ignore it, it’s a bit horrible, I know. I’ll skip past that bit of me quick. Right. As you can see, I’m touching myself-”

 

Willas takes a deep breath, head falling back against the soft padding of his armchair.

 

“I’m awful at typing, but I’m not bad at talking. Mostly rubbish. Especially when I’m, you know,” and he takes another of those fortifying breaths. “Masturbating. Because of you. I’m really close, by the way, but if I keep talking I can try and keep filming, concentrate on that, so you can see what my body’s like at least. I’ll try. If I drop the phone and the world starts spinning, I had to. This is really hard to say! It isn’t like I do this with actual people, not for a while at least. Come. There. Said it! If I drop the phone, I’ve done that.”

 

“Stomach. Chest. Ignore that scar as well. If you see any scars, or bruising, just gloss over. Perks of the job when you can be kicked by cows on a daily basis, really. No piercings. I almost had a tattoo once, when I came out of uni, but I think I’m not cut out for body art. This is really hard. Like me. Oh shut up, Wi-”

 

He pauses, realises he’s almost said his name, but is so close to climax he forgets his foolishness in a second. For some ridiculous reason, almost admitting who he is slaps him hard in the arousal, dragging him dangerously towards inevitability.

 

“Hah. A-almost told you. Name there. Gods. I’m close. I can’t. Sorry…!”

 

The camera slides, Willas scrabbling and grabbing, the screen flaring light across the softly lit room, before he is gasping and almost swearing, shivering as his hand works harder and tighter, and then his fingers are wet and sticky, and the blood pours in his ears and his head, pounding and roaring, and someone is making a noise like a shrieking kettle, and he realises, the camera phone pointing at his dripping hand and the head of his cock, that he’s screaming his head off.

 

He waits for thirty seconds, staring at nothing, head somewhere else, before automatically sending the video clip.

 

Without checking.

 

* * *

 

Sleep happens. 

 

He wakes up, second alarm blaring at him; it is the first time for months that Willas has slept in until the heady time of 6.15am, and he scrubs his hands across his gritty eyes. Mouth? Tastes like he’s licked a carpet. Head? Woolly. Sheep-like. Body? Limp as a five day old lettuce leaf, and just as green.

 

He might have finished the bottle of wine off after sending the video. He might have passed out, thankfully on his bed, at around 10.30pm, singing that song about pixies.

 

Dragging himself unwillingly from his lovely little nest, it is only when Willas is propped up in the shower, fighting nausea and the hangover from the Stranger that he realises, with a dull horror, that it is Saturday.

 

Bugger. Buggering buggerations.

 

Not just any Saturday.

 

No. Never just any Saturday.

 

* * *

 


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

 

 

Highgarden is lovely this time of year, even when fighting through a hangover/migraine and wanting to just turn around, go home, pretend he forgot. Or overslept. Or died. Would death work as an excuse? Probably not. Olenna is the sort of vindictive Grandmother who would insist they have an open casket wake for Willas at her birthday party. She’d wear black, lap up the attention, have Tywin Lannister put a supportive manly arm about her small fragile frame.

 

It isn’t that Olenna doesn’t like her family. In all honesty she adores her grandchildren, dotes on them. Even if Loras is a tart, Margaery is living with the commonest man ever to ooze from Flea Bottom, and Willas actually works. There is enough money in his trust fund to pay for the sort of elegantly non-employed lifestyle of a very aristocratic heir to a very aristocratic title, but Willas, too academic, cannot stand doing nothing. Of course he could open a stud farm. He could be a philanthropist. He could pay for scholarships to agricultural colleges for the poor, or fund captive breeding programmes for endangered species. He could be married to some well-bred unfortunate girl and a father of two. He could be be so many things.

 

Instead Willas wanks bulls, lives to work in an office with three very interesting colleagues, drinks wine for his evening meal, and has text sex with a beautiful older man from Dorne.

 

Which, if he thinks about it, isn’t that bad an existence.

 

“Willas. You look thin.” Olenna, resplendent in her usual Tyrell-green silk dress, kisses his cheeks. She smells vaguely of formaldehyde.

 

“I’ve been very busy. Sorry.”

 

“I’ll get some fat on you. How can you attract a suitable mate without a little bit of substance?” She pokes at his stomach with a talon painted gold. “You are the only one I can rely on now, given your brother and his penchant for buggery, and Margaery’s bit of rough being snipped.”

 

“Bronn is-?” He blinks. “How do you know?”

 

Olenna considers him, eyes like little black raisins. “I asked.”

 

“Of course you did.”

 

“Come, you have people to meet.”

 

He is dragged, and his grandmother is surprisingly strong for a pensioner, through the great and the good of Westeros. Ned Stark considers a canape while Cat fends off Petyr Baelish, the one person possibly more serial killer and creepy than Bolton. Rebuffed, he tries his luck with Sansa, before walking into the brick wall of Clegane’s disturbingly broad chest swathed in acres of tight stretchy cotton; out-masculined, he flees and tries to pull Lysa Tully instead. Brynden Tully and Jon Connington discuss people's’ outfits and drink beer. Connington has his hand in the Blackfish’s back pocket. A gaggle of Targaryens, silvery-blond and gorgeous to a person, congregate in a corner. They are all wearing black and red. So many high ranking, posh people; Baratheons, though thankfully not Stannis, and Boltons, though extra specially thankfully not Ramsay. Olive-skinned Dornes, and for a moment that flash of gorgeous abs and strong-lean hands fills his head with an almost sickening want.

 

Thankfully he doesn’t get an erection. Willas is too terrified and cowed by the surroundings to get turned on.

 

He is deposited before Tywin Lannister, who intimidates him even though they’ve never met and he’s only seen the man in photographs. The martinet is hissing at a very handsome blond man, who, in turn, is bickering with a tall blond woman who looks as if she can bench press Willas-sized objects for breakfast.

 

“I cannot believe I had to extricate you from Lady Tyrell’s bedroom. The nerve of you, boy, the sheer disgusting ner- Olenna. My dear.” Tywin switches from spitting fire to charming older man, though he is a decade younger than Grandmother, making him, which is really icky, a toyboy. “This must be Willas?”

 

“Ser. A pleasure to meet you.” The headache buzzes low, and uncomfortable, and Willas wonders if he can have a drink. He is on the verge of flopping. He offers a hand, which is shaken, and for once he is thankful for Mace’s etiquette lessons on How To Be Manly At Other Men.

 

“Jaime. Brienne.” Nodding, icily, at the two he is with. Willas was invited to their wedding, but there was an emergency in regards to the freezers going down at the office, so luckily for him, he spent the day trying to stop semen samples defrosting.

 

It isn’t that he hates socialising; no, with those he knows and likes, Willas is chattily amiable, and considered a very nice person indeed. Kind, they say. Warm. Like a brother. In other circumstances, especially weddings, and everyone thinks them so romantic, and ask whether it’ll be his turn soon, and point out the single women - never the men, because most think only Loras is the gay one in the Tyrell family - and try and get him to dance, even with his cane in full view, and then Olenna uses her contacts to try and set up dates, and really? Awful. Horrid. Mind-meltingly painful.

 

Like today, in fact. Olenna already mentioned Alys Karstark, Sansa, and Asha Greyjoy. If he is to get involved with any of the Pyke lot, it would be Euron, who is quite dishy. Though Asha isn’t bad, since she’s pleasingly masculine and as gay as he is. Perhaps they should marry, be each other’s beards, and stop their respective families whining about grandchildren that way? Perhaps a lovely big gay family, each with a lover, and all living together at Highgarden to spite every person -  i.e. Olenna - with their fierce desperation for Willas to get married and breed.

 

The tall blonde woman smiles, warm and kind, and Willas decides he likes her. “Very nice to meet you, Willas. We’ve heard so much about you.”

 

“Mostly good. Do you seriously jerk off cows for a living?” The man grins, perfect teeth and charming crinkles in the corner of his green eyes, and if he didn’t have mystery dick pic man, he’d possibly develop a little bit of a crush. No one should be that good looking, or well-made, or casually dressed like some unattainable male model from an expensive aftershave advert. 

 

“Jaime!”

 

“Um. It’s bulls. I do that to bulls. Cows haven’t got,” and he flails gently. “The requisite genitalia.”

 

“Come and tell me all about it,” Jaime says, smoothly, an arm ending up around Willas’ shoulders. “Sorry we can’t stay and chat, Olenna, but I need to know how this works. I’ve never met a man who wanks animals for a living. I’m sure you don’t need to hear the gory details, given your delicate nature. We’ll return him after we get all of the ins and outs.” A wide, guileless smile, before he is effortlessly steered away, away from the ballroom - Highgarden has a ballroom, and it always makes him a little embarrassed that one day the vast pile will all be his - towards the courtyard.

 

“Thank you for turning up and deflecting our bollocking.” Jaime releases him, smacks him on the shoulder, Brienne padding next to them like some magnificent stallion. She is no mare. She is too muscled and impressively proportioned for that. All solid thighs and broad shoulders and a million freckles. Idly Willas wonders if she has a brother, because if she does, mystery dick pic man has a severe threat on his hands for Tyrell affection. “We’re kidnapping the normal people and getting really drunk. Or stoned. Whatever floats your boat.”

 

“Jaime,” and Brienne gives him the sort of loving exasperated look that only a woman can give her beloved partner, “decided that trying to have sex on Lady Tyrell’s bed was a very good idea.”

 

Willas stares, huge eyed, before pressing his hand over his mouth to prevent the raucous bubbling laughter that threatens to engulf everything within a ten yard radius. “What did she say?”

 

The woman’s mouth twitches as Lannister coughs. “Tell him, Jaime.”

 

“Bri!”

 

“Tell him.”

 

“Fine. Fine. She waltzed in, patted me on the arse, and told me that my bum is just like Tywin’s, that they have an active and healthy sex life, and it’s nice seeing that I’m as fond of shagging on that bed as my father is.”

 

“Oh.” Olenna doesn’t have sex. She never did. She gave birth through splitting like an amoeba. “I think...I need a drink?”

 

“So do I. Your grandmother fondled my arse. I don’t want to know where she’s put her hand before that.”

* * *

 

The courtyard is full of the usual suspects, and Willas feels the tension slowly seep from his shoulders. Margie and Bronn share a bottle of champagne, drinking from the neck. Daenerys, who has managed to split off from the pack of other Targaryens, and sports a dress made from thousands of glittering black and red sequins that make her look clad in dragonscale, is wrapped in the comfortingly butch arms of Asha. Theon and Robb poke each other, stoned out of their heads, giggling as they roll joints for everyone; Greyjoy is the source for everyone when it comes to drugs, apparently. No one cares about Customs and Excise on Pyke. Not when his disturbingly attractive one-eyed uncle is both Lord-Lieutenant and the biggest smuggler this side of the Narrow Sea.

 

“Willas!” The name rises in a babble. Someone, bless them, gives him a massive glass of red wine. Sam Tarly pats his shoulder, manfully. Jon Snow hugs him, because he is as tactile as Rhaegar Targaryen when drunk; his Wildling, red-haired and grinning, drags him away to sit down before he falls over. A kiss from Theon, because, well, Theon. Robb punches him gently. Margie can’t be arsed to get up, because Bronn has his hands on her thighs and is nibbling down the side of her throat.

 

He’s quite popular, as these things go, mostly because Willas is dependable, reliable, and as Theon tells him jealously on a weekly basis, has the best cheekbones in Westeros. No one tries to sleep with him, not now. In the beginning there were those who attempted to seduce him, but Willas turned them down gently, and now they all think he’s totally asexual, or has a super secret lover somewhere in King’s Landing.

 

Renly asked him once if he was shagging Stannis, and made wine come out of Willas’ nose.

 

“You okay?” Gilly fusses at him. “You look ill.”

 

“Hangover.”

 

“Willas, you drunk! Why aren’t you drunk with me? I could totally like grope you and shit. Cheeeeekbones!” Theon giggles again as Robb kicks him, rolling his bright blue eyes. “What? You’d totally like do Willas. He’s hot like fuck, mate. Untouchable makes him just totally sexy, yeah?”

 

The blush starts at his toes, erupts up his body volcano-like, burns his cheeks.

 

“Stop embarrassing him.” Jon throws a vol-au-vent.

 

“Just ‘cos you want him for yourself. Fuck. imagine you two with your cheekbones.” Greyjoy collapses into some sort of boneless pile, muttering about bone structure.

 

“Ignore him. He’s been taking pills.” Robb stretches, languidly. “Stupid shit that he is.”

 

“Your stupid shit, babe.” A wink. Theon’s endless adoration of Robb Stark is well-known, though the eldest of the Stark gaggle of kids has no idea that underneath the OTT flirting with everyone, and the cheerful attempts at shagging all, Greyjoy’s been in love with him since they were in secondary school.

 

Asha smacks her brother, amused and grim in turn, on the head with a rolled up newspaper.

 

“Theon, stop being a whore.”

 

“Stop hitting meee! Robb! Save me from lesbians?”

 

“Newspapers,” Dany murmurs dreamily, her beringed fingers stroking her girlfriend’s cheek. “Are the best for telling off naughty dragons.” If Willas didn’t know her better, he’d think the woman out of her head on whatever Theon’s taking, but Daenerys Targaryen has always been quite, well. Weird. Especially when her husband ran off with Jorah Mormont. Apparently all that mutual loathing means Drogo and he have insanely good hate sex. Willas has no idea why people like the idea of hate sex. Kisses, and Dornishmen who praise him, are far more his sort of thing.

 

“Squid. Theon’s got no dragon backbone. He’s cephalopodic to the max.”

 

A chill descends, as sudden as death. Silence. Each and every one of them pauses, looking towards the glazed doors between one of the luncheon rooms and the courtyard. Arms tighten around partners and spouses. Doom threatens, indistinct but there.

 

Bootsteps. Ones he knows.

 

Bootsteps, and Willas freezes, like a rabbit in headlights, as the last person he wants to see stalks into the courtyard. Even though this is a posh party, Bolton is still head to toe in black leather, ignoring everyone as he stalks to the table where several bottles of fine Tyrell-owned booze sit, temptingly. He seems to pick one at random, turns on his heel, pauses, before he fixes Theon with a death glare.

 

“Oh, fuck.” Robb’s hand ends up on the back of Greyjoy’s neck.

 

“Bitch.” As greetings go, it isn’t really a great one. It is, however, very Bolton.

 

“Ramsay,” someone says quietly, “don’t be a dick.”

 

Beric Dondarrion is, well, far more handsome than he has any right to be. The side of his face that isn’t eyepatched and battered - Willas now wonders if he has an eyepatch fetish given this man and Euron Greyjoy - is attractive. His hair, red-gold, flows to his shoulders. He is tall, and muscular, and looks some sort of wet dream in a dark purple shirt and black trousers; he’s the sort that, given idly fantasy, could hold a lover against a wall, with legs wrapped around his waist, and give them a jolly good seeing to. Probably while reciting the tenets of R’hllor.

 

Bolton pauses, weird pale eyes flicking from the terrified Theon to the zen calm of an almost Red Priest, before he snorts. “Keep that little addict the fuck away from me.”

 

“Noted.” Robb nods.

 

“Ramsay.” Fingers tapping. “We can’t annoy Roose if you’re here, can we?” 

 

“Yeah. Coming.” And, like some well trained psychopathic attack dog, he follows Dondarrion back into the warm echoing halls of Highgarden.

 

The collective sigh of relief is audible. The release of tension is palpable.

 

“Shit. Fuck. Why’s he here?” Theon curls into himself.

 

“Roose probably thought it’d be amusing to let the little bastard off his leash for once.” The hand on Greyjoy’s neck rubs, gently, at the pale skin. “Just, for the love of the Seven, don’t get so stoned you try and shag him again.”

 

“You tried to? With Bolton?” someone says, and Willas realises, belatedly, that the words came from him.

 

“He’s sexy. Crazy as fuck, and, like, totally sexy. Least Beric’s here. Beric’ll save me!” Melodramatically, and taking advantage of the situation, Theon ends up snuggling Robb, hiding his head in the redhead’s broad shoulder. “Bet he fucks so well. All that leather. That arse. That...you think him and Beric? Fuck. Imagine that. Imagine the muscles and the anger. Bet they’re kinky as, like, fuck. Totally BDSM, yeah?”

 

Someone makes a sound like a gun exploding, a deep snort that belongs to some enormous Shire horse, and everyone turns as one to see Sandor Clegane actually laughing. He’s quite handsome when he laughs. All crinkles, and interesting carved flesh.

 

“Fuck’s sake, you twat.”

 

Theon, sensing new opportunities at shagging, bats his eyelashes, eyes the ridiculous tightness of today’s Clegane t-shirt. Off-duty!Sandor dresses a lot less scruffily than work!Sandor. Every time Willas witnesses the man not in the office, he’s headily reminded that under the baggy black, and the general smell of horse, he’s really. Well. Ripply. All over.

 

“Asha?” Sansa has the sweetest of voices, edged with something akin to titanium.

 

“Yes, gorgeous?”

 

“Could I borrow your newspaper, please? I think Theon needs a reminder.”

 

Willas quietly drinks more wine, trying to block out lurking memories of that phone conversation that he happened to overhear. His glass seems to be topping itself up, though Lannister, next to him like a golden god, seems to have commandeered several bottles. Brienne doesn’t drink, so it looks like Jaime has chosen Willas as his drinking companion.

 

* * *

 

“Ah, what have I discovered here?” purrs a voice; wet velvet overlying smoke and leather. “I presume you have something for me, little squid? To combat the boredom?”

 

“Oberyn!” The cry goes up, excited, and Willas blinks as others rush towards the new person who has interrupted their little separate party. 

 

Theon raises a finger. He is puddled on Robb’s thigh, head resting on his friend’s shoulder, apparently still traumatised over the Ramsay Bolton incident. “I got some, like, totally good shit.”

 

“Excellent. It is a most terrible thing when I must partake of illicit substances to deal with a party.”

 

Willas focusses, bleary, and then.

 

Wow.

 

Lean, beautiful, like a panther. Dark hair, laughing cinnamon-flecked eyes. A gleaming smile of white-toothed glory. Long long legs, silk shirt unbuttoned to his chest, and artful hair in a state of perfect disarray. Dornish accent. Facial hair. The rabbit hole opens, wide and gaping, and Willas struggles to hang on to the edge lest he just plummet into oblivion.

 

Oberyn, popular, makes the rounds. Kisses, and hugs, and murmurs of appreciation. He is all at once flirtatious and charming, elegant and possessing a sharp edge that could possibly cut those who drift too near. Jon is caressed, his Wildling kissed on the corner of the mouth. Theon swept into a tight embrace, Robb patted gently upon the cheek. With Jaime and Brienne there are handshakes, compensating for the lack of Lannister’s right hand.

 

And then.

 

Oberyn looks down at Willas, and something flares, something he doesn’t understand, in those black-edged eyes.

 

“Um. Hi.”

 

The beautiful man just stares, sending Willas’ face far too red and his blood pressure far too high.

 

“Oberyn, this is Willas. Poor little bugger is Olenna’s eldest grandson. Willas, this is Oberyn. Doran Martell’s brother.” Jaime nudges the Dornishman with a toe. “Stop drooling, Martell.”

 

_ “I ne’er saw true beauty til this night _ ,” murmurs Oberyn. “Such cheekbones.” Oh Gods. He quotes. He is educated. He is smooth. He could be slightly cheesy and a little corny, but the way he speaks; the caressing of the vowels, the drawl of consonants, the gorgeous mouth...

 

“My cheekbones,” Theon yells. “Mine! I’ve not fucked him, dude, you totally can’t fuck him, like, I’ve known him longer and shit. Bagsie me first!” 

 

“Children,” murmurs Oberyn, eyes never leaving Willas’ own, “should be seen and not heard, Greyjoy. Inside voice, yes? Speak with your inside voice.”

 

Willas grabs his glass wordlessly, possibly in the middle of dying as those dark eyes bore into his skull with every breath he takes, and drains it. A moment later it is full again. A moment after that the gorgeosity that is Oberyn Martell settles elegantly into the chair next to Willas. 

 

“Here I was, considering not attending. And yet, now, I am so very glad I did.”

 

Bronn reaches for another bottle of champagne. “You’re goin’ for the only bloke here that doesn’t fuck around, Obi. Willas is a fuckin’ angel compared to us sluts.”

 

“” _ We all are men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels _ .””

 

“ _ Henry VIII _ .” Willas can’t help himself. “I can’t remember what act. Not just like that.”

 

“Act V, Scene III, Wil,” Margaery adds, helpfully. She lounges atop her rough trade, expression beatified. “Willas masturbates cows for a living, Oberyn.”

 

“Bulls. Cows haven’t got-”

 

“Ah, such skills must be transferrable, yes?”

 

Oh. Gods. Panic.

 

“I’m just...going to...uh. Be back in a min.”

 

It’s too hot, and he feels a bit sick, and everyone is joking at him and for once it all feels a little too much. A breath of air that isn’t fugged with dope, booze, and fag smoke. Possibly a drink of cold water. He struggles to his feet, finds his cane, limps away through the narrow passage out onto the terrace that houses Olenna’s fine Valyrian statue collection. The wine sloshes uncomfortable, has gone rather too much to his head, and that bloody headache that Willas drove away with booze and over the counter painkillers seems to be trying to claw its way back into his consciousness.

 

Darkness envelops, his old friend, and he must stop thinking in quotes now; a sign of his alcohol intake is that Willas can hold entire conversations in song lyrics. Overhead is a milky black of galaxies whirling, and stars glimmering,  _ keeping watch in the ni _ -

 

Oh, for the love of the Seven. Now he’s starting on musicals.

 

Right. Calm. Sensible. Relax.

 

Instinctively, he checks his phone. He needs grounding, and messages, and a feeling of being himself.

 

**_19.35: I shall be away tonight, my little one. I am attending a birthday party for a woman I dislike intensely. I would, of course, prefer to be watching your video. You are beautiful. I do not think many tell you that, considering your language. You, sweet boy, are beautiful. Delicate and porcelain. If I touched you, would you break? If I kissed you, would you shatter? If I took your cock in my hungry mouth, would you fragment into a thousand shards? I would piece you together, once more, only to have you break for me over, and over._ **

 

**_20.17: Ah, the wine is passable. If you were here, I would steal a bottle and share it with you in a quiet alcove. It is not as excellent a vintage as my own Dornish, and perhaps a little sweet? You would adore it. You seem the type to love sweetness._ **

 

**_20.56: At last. Rumour has it that the more lively of the invited are holding their own offshoot party. Good night, my mystery. I shall report back tomorrow, though I shall miss you._ **

 

**_20.57: It is obvious that I have been drinking. I have not propositioned you for at least an hour._ **

 

Hopefully mystery dick pic man’s party is nicer than this. He rubs a thumb across the screen, wonders if he should reply. No. It would be melancholy, and Willas doesn’t want to inflict that on a man he barely knows.

 

“You steal away and look at your phone? Scandalous.” A glitter of white teeth in starlight, and Oberyn Martell settles upon the stone bench. He smells of what Dorne must be like; spice, and musk, and a touch of cannabis, and bears two glasses of wine.

 

“Just needed a breather. Sorry.”

 

“Never apologise for what is not your fault. Here. I chose the Arbour Gold, for it suits you more than the red?”

 

“It’s sweet. I like the sweetness.”

 

“I thought you would.”

 

The glass is cool and damp in his fingers, and Willas sips, eyes closing. “Thank you for bringing me wine.”

 

“Thank you,” Oberyn murmurs, and he is rather close. Thighs press, knees touch, and the blush that never seems to calm when around attractive men blazes once more in Willas’ cheeks. At least it’s dark. At least he can pretend to be calm and collected.

 

Willas pauses, glass halfway to his lips.

 

“Sorry? Thank you for what, sorry?”

 

“Last night.”

 

“Pardon?” Oberyn Martell is obviously mad. Beautiful, and absolutely barking.

 

“Perhaps, when you break, you should hold your phone more securely? Such a pretty face when you come.” His lips press against Willas’ ear, breath hot with mint and wine. “And such circumstance, to find you here, sweet boy, more lovely than when you text. How such an educated man cannot type, I do not know.”

 

Oh my Gods.

 

Willas drops the glass.

 

The grin gives Oberyn away. Passionate lips, the suggestion of stubble, a handsome moustache and, above all, the tiny chip on the inner edge of his front tooth.

 

“Mystery dick pic man. But. Oh Gods."

 

“Breathe, sweet one.” Fingers stroke the nape of Willas’ neck, and he shivers, flinches, almost pulls away. “You must not fret. You are passionate, and exquisite. A jewel of the Reach, that I wish to polish.”

 

“I didn’t know. Oh Gods! This is. I just. What the. I don’t. You? But you’re? I can’t believe. This is mad. Absolutely mad.” Panic will not. Stop. Rising. He is here, with the man he’s been masturbating over for two whole weeks, who is touching him, stroking his neck, and his hair, and whispering in his ear like a lover. And Willas is in the closet. And Oberyn is the opposite. Very much so. And this is awkward, and awful, and he’s totally confused, and terrified, and a bit turned on, and everything is so. And this is Olenna’s birthday party! And this is a Martell - not just a minor one, but Doran Martell’s little brother! Who is gorgeous, and unprincipled, and has a hand on his knee, over the wreck of scar tissue, and is nuzzling the side of his throat. Oh Gods. Don’t panic. Don’t panic, Willas.

 

“It is a shock, yes?”

 

“But I...how do you know? I didn’t say me. And you said you’d not look me up. Did you look me up? But you said you wouldn’t, and-”

 

“When you came, so beautifully - and how I wished to lick your fingers clean, suckle upon the tips, tongue your palm - your phone slipped in your grasp. It showed your face. Such a face could I not forget. Such cheekbones, and lips, and wide hazel eyes, like those of a faun. A sweet otherworldly creature, radiant and lovely. Then I saw you, beside beautiful Jaime, and I knew that you were he. A perfect Tyrell rose.”

 

The words are romantic and debauched in equal measure, and Willas shivers.

 

“I can’t. Not here. They don’t know I’m-”

 

Immediately Willas berates himself, because that sounds rather like a promise that if they weren’t as his grandmother’s birthday party, he’d be climbing into bed with this gorgeous Dornishman who smiles against the side of his throat. Too dangerous. If Olenna found them. Everyone would know, and she’d go absolutely spare, and probably disown him for not being the perfect heir she has attempted to create.

 

Fingers wrap about his hand, lips brush along veins and tendons and the delicate flesh of the inside of his pale wrist. Against his fishbelly whiteness, Oberyn looks darker, more tanned, more exotic. And now he’s exoticising the man, and that is reprehensible.

 

“Perhaps a promise of what will come, my rose?” Teeth scrape, so very gently, an agile slickness of tongue gliding over warm skin.

 

“I am going to die.”

 

“Many times. Over and over, in my arms, by my tongue, and hands, and cock. I wish to see you before me, desperate. Begging for all I can give. Would you beg, little one? Would you gasp ‘please’ in that delicious accent? Would you give me your everything?” 

 

“Definitely going to die,” he breathes, as Oberyn sucks lightly at the racing pulse under Willas’ trembling thumb.

 

For a moment Willas just breathes, rapid and shivering, before he does what he usually does in these situations.

 

He flees.

 

* * *

 

It is Brienne who corners him, of all people. Theon and Robb are making out sloppily, as always happens when they’re that out of their heads, even if Robb is totally straight. Margie and Bronn disappeared with two bottles of champagne and a platter of smoked salmon blinis hours before. Apparently someone found Bolton in a cupboard with Dondarrion, but no one dares speak of what they saw. Blood of virgins has been mentioned, along with flaying, strangulation, and, apparently, Ramsay being sturdily sexy under all that leather.

 

“You okay?” she asks, her voice careful. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

 

“It’s complicated.”

 

“Oberyn?”

 

He nods, swallowing. “We know each other. Sort of. Internet stuff.”

 

“Willas. Be careful?” Her blue eyes are very kind. “You seem such a nice person, and I’d hate for you to get hurt. Oberyn can be really bloody pushy about things, if he wants something. He’ll take no for an answer, but you seem like someone who finds it difficult to say that? He’s handsome, and charming, but he does sleep around. A lot. I just thought you should know, since, I don’t know. Sometimes we need a friend?”

 

“I’m not gay,” he says, automatically, voice flat. “I’m. Shit. Sorry. I am. Just. No one knows, Brienne, apart from Margie. Loras is the gay one. I’m the geeky one. Margie is the socialite. We’ve got places in the family, and...Olenna will go mad if she finds out. She’s got it all planned. The girl. The wedding. The number of acceptable children, one of each gender, to carry on the Tyrell name. She’s terrifying. She is like this overbearing pressure in my life, which is why I work, and am in King’s Landing, away from her. She’d have me here, being lord of the manor, being, I don’t know. Normal.”

 

The woman nods, looks awkward, before pulling him in for a hug. It is like being embraced by a man; all flatness and angles, though she strokes his hair like a mother would. Brienne, he decides, absently, is a really good bloke.

 

“I know what that’s like - same with Jaime. Cersei’s a drunk. Tyrion is a brilliant person, but he’s a little person, so Tywin hates him for not being perfect. Even if Tyrion is probably the best of the three of them. So everything falls on Jaime. And Jaime, being Jaime, rebels. He married me, for one-”

 

“But you’re lovely!” She is.

 

“I’m not a Lannister trophy wife, content to have children, sit about, look pretty. I work, I’m in the top five fencers in Westeros. I like wearing Jaime’s jeans and clothes - we share a wardrobe. I’m not having children until I’m at least thirty. I’m too independent.”

 

“Tywin is an idiot.”

 

Brienne smiles, and is beautiful. All those clean lines and the cropped blonde hair, and those gorgeous eyes, make her striking. Not like a model, or a typical Westerosi beauty, but something more than that; transcending the usual into someone utterly unique. When she and Jaime do have children, they will be tall, blond, and utterly devastating.

 

“But anyway, I understand. We do, Jaime and I. Just be careful, that’s all.”

 

“I will be. Promise” Her fingers ghost his cheekbone, almost fondly.

 

* * *

 

Just sex. That’s all it is.

 

Willas doesn’t have Just Sex.

 

He’s never kissed until at least the third date, and even then he feels like a complete tart.

 

It’s different, when it is phone-based. There is a healthy separation between him, Willas, and him, Phone!Willas. The latter is more outgoing, more sexually open. A little more decisive about these things. Usually drunk.

 

His old bedroom at Highgarden is almost as it was when he left home six years previously. Neat, and tidy, the same pale cream walls, the same gold and green curtains. There are so many rooms in the mansion that it is more cost effective to close down any that aren’t being used. Dust sheets lay folded in the inbuilt wardrobe, no doubt put there by one of the very harassed foreign maids that his grandmother goes through like water. Always new staff when he comes to visit, though the chef, Hot Pie, reigns supreme.

 

**2.39 am.**

 

He is awake, and horribly so, because there are certain matters that keep him from sleep more than others. Stannis. Fear of entering incorrect data into the systems at work and ruining five years of obsessive hard work. Bolton. Olenna.

 

This time, though, he can still feel the whispers of fingers on his neck and wrist. Cologne. Low words curling into his ear.

 

Whatsapp pings, and he automatically reaches over to get it. Beats staring at the shadowy ceiling and fretting.

 

**2.40:** **_We are in a club. You should be with us, sweet boy. Theon can dance surprisingly well, though holds Robb up as he does. Bolton and Dondarrion have joined us. Bolton is very drunk and hisses if anyone goes near his friend. Dondarrion seems convinced they are not lovers. Is he who is to be collared? Margaery bids me send her love. We are sharing wine. I should be sharing wine with you._ **

 

**2.42:** **_If you were here, I would drag you to the bathroom. Lock us in a cubicle. Take you in my mouth and have you sing your completion._ **

 

**2.44:** **_Are you abed? Do you sleep, my mystery who is no longer hidden?_ **

 

**2.48:** **_Dine with me. I insist._ **

 

**2.49:** **_You are pretty. Did you know this?_ **

 

**2.50:** **_I am quite drunk. Usually I find a lover for the evening, yet I wish for that lover to be you. I imagine you, curled asleep, hair ruffled, lips parted. You do not hear me as I enter the bedchamber, for I pad like a cat. Before me you lie, pretty little Willas, so tempting. So tempting that I must kiss your mouth, wake you from your slumber with a gasp. You lay so prettily. All long languid limbs, and bruised eyelids. Laid before me like a delicious platter. I wish to taste you. I want to run my lips across every inch of skin, nuzzling. Licking. Watching that delicate rose blush colour your cheeks. Across your thighs, to the crease of your groin, to where your testes meet that sweet little spot behind them. I fixate when I have imbibed, my rose without thorns. I fixate upon wanting to suck your perfect cock. Ah, others think I must dominate, for I am Oberyn Martell. They think I must mount my lovers, take my pleasure in fucking. No, little Willas. I give all of myself. My cock. My mouth. My backside. Perhaps you would take me? Would you desire that, my innocent incubus? Can an incubus be as sweet natured, as naive? As untouchable? Would you hold my hips and thrust so very deep so I see stars and come sobbing your name?_ **

 

A video clip follows, the phone shaking as Oberyn, obviously locked in a toilet cubicle, strokes himself to climax with his soft patter of swearing punctuated by Willas’ name.

 

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

 

The next morning is filled with hangovers, and groaning, and many people trying not to be sick. Willas silently attends them, trying to help, aware that he looks rather more awful than he usually does. The mirror doesn’t lie; he’s grey, and heavily shadowed around the eye sockets, and Bronn, cheerily sober because he has the constitution of a Dothraki, asks if he’s finally going for the tortured cow wanking artist look. Willas doesn’t even correct the man in regard to the gender of bovines. He’s that tired, fed up, numb about the entire experience.

 

Water is given. Painkillers. Jon’s Wildling waddles into view wrapped in a duvet that has a floral patterned covered, and begs a neat whisky off one of the foreign maids, before wandering back to wherever Snow bedded down.

 

Brienne assists, bless her to all the Gods. She pauses, touches his cheek with rough fingers.

 

“You need to sleep.”

 

“I’ve got to go home.” King’s Landing. Sweet sweet home. Away from Olenna, and the heavy yoke of Tyrell expectation, and dark Dornish eyes. “I’ve got work to finish off for tomorrow.”

 

“It’s Sunday, Willas. You can work tomorrow.

 

“I want to go home.” It comes out rather more petulantly than meant.

 

“You’re going to fall over.” She looks around, sighs, then gently drags him away from the groaning mass of the hungover. Jaime wanders past, a cafetiere of coffee in his hand. He takes long sips from it, eyes hooded, wearing what looks suspiciously like Grandmother’s green silk bathrobe. Brienne cannot hide a fond flicker of a smile as they pass the blond, who really is gorgeous, even in the throes of headache, nausea, and a certain knackeredness.

 

Outside is better, crisper, clearer. The suggestion of sunshine does nothing to halt Willas’ own suffering, but this is far better than lurking within the crypt-like bowels of Highgarden. When it is his, if Olenna doesn’t write him out of the will for dallying with men and ruining her grander scheme of things, he’s going to have it lightened, updated, made less mausoleum. Dad just let Grandmother keep it exactly how the mansion was fifty years before, when she first married Grandfather, because Mace has the interior decorating skills of a rutting boar.

 

“What happened?” They settle on a stone balustrade, looking towards the vaguely pornographic stone statue of a frolicking nymph with water pouring from her armpits. None of the garden ornaments tucked cunningly into the extensive landscaped grounds are tasteful. Expensive, yes. Culturally significant. Stolen from Valyria by explorers two centuries before and often demanded back by the Free Cities, definitely.

 

“Nothing.”

 

Brienne’s eyebrows quirk.

 

“You look like a wet weekend in the Riverlands.”

 

“I just...couldn’t. It was nice, it was. But. Oh Gods.” More than nice. A tiny bruise where Oberyn’s teeth nipped a little overenthusiastically sits, proud and defiant, upon a Tyrell collarbone. The tingling of lips against skin still lingers, which is ridiculous, but, oh, the stubble and the moustache and the heat of that trailing tempting mouth. But outside, in the open! Where anyone (Olenna) could have found the heir to Highgarden being gently mauled by a Dornish reprobate!

 

A long-fingered and impressively strong hand pats his. “You can talk to me, if you want? I’m apparently very good to talk to, as I like listening. I can’t help you with any of it, really, since it is outside my remit.”

 

“But you and Jaime-?”

 

Brienne really is attractive when she grins, unabashed at her differences. Perhaps he should try and emulate her? She is brave, and Willas? Really isn’t, at all. Not with people. He can cuff a rampaging bull on the nose and calm it, soothe the spirits of a wild-tempered colt. Animals are easy though, predictable and have patterns he can understand. People are all over the place, and madly different, and it can be overwhelming if he gets too involved. Brienne wears herself like a shield; as if her height, and fascinating looks, and her crossing of gender boundaries is something that is unique and wonderful rather than, to some, idiotic and foolish. She seems to just inhabit a space that is all her, all untouchable and warrior-like, above all of the pettiness and shallowness of everything.

 

“Me and Jaime squabbled for years before realising it was the grown up version of him pulling my hair in the playground and me calling him a stupid horrible boy with cooties.” She snorts, wrinkles her nose, glorious eyes bright. “We are basically ten year olds who inhabit these adult bodies. He’s an overgrown child, and brings out the worst in me. Luckily, I see it as two people who have similarities finding the other person who can see beyond the surface. He’s so handsome that it terrifies me.”

 

“You’re so striking. I wish I was as striking as you.”

 

“We’re not here to talk about me,” Brienne says, shaking her head. Her hair glows platinum for a moment, almost Targaryen, but without any of the incest or insufferable obsession with centuries long gone.

 

“I’m a little overwhelmed,” he admits, staring at the beautifully maintained Westerlands stone paving that creates a charming little patio surrounded by buddleia and the faintest suggestion of honeysuckle. “I’ve had boyfriends before, but they weren’t like...well. So. Gods. Enthusiastic?” Was that the right word for the ardent pressing of Oberyn’s suit? “They liked me, I think - well, I suppose they did, they went out of with me, but they weren’t like Oberyn.”

 

That sounds horribly old-fashioned. A little like Willas himself, really.

 

“You don’t have to let him do anything that you don’t want.”

 

“I know. I Just. Sorry. This is really difficult to say - I mean, I don’t even know what I want, let alone telling anyone else. Just. He’s so handsome, Brienne. He’s clever, and witty, and charming, and a little dangerous? He’s just beautiful. The way he speaks, and moves. He makes me laugh. When- When he writes to me. We message, I didn’t know it was him, and then he found out it was me, and there are videos involved, and it could all be so awfully sordid if anyone knew. It was different, when it was me and mystery dick pic man-”

 

Brienne blinks, all sandy lashes and a tilt of the head indicating curiosity, and Willas feels his tense mouth tug slightly at the corners.

 

“He sent me a picture meant for someone else, and it sort of snowballed from there. I just. It was nice. Someone making a fuss, I suppose, over me. No one usually does, and it can be lonely sometimes with just work and not really having friends near, and I sort of got rather attached to having this very charming, very erudite and worldly man paying me attention. Sending videos. Oh Gods, please don’t tell anyone about this? Grandmother would kill me. She’s horrified about Loras sleeping with the male population of Essos, let alone me sexting Oberyn Martell! But it was different before, more - I don’t know. Compartmentalised, in a way. I had work, and not work, and this dalliance via Whatsapp. Then it sort of burst into real life, almost. I don’t think I was ready for it to become so immediate, so in my face, so to speak. I never thought I’d meet the person at the other end of the messages, let alone have him interested. And what if it is just sex he wants? I don’t do that, Brienne, I’m not that sort of man. I’m dates, and dinner, and going to the pictures to watch films based on fantasy novels and sci-fi classics. I’m not just jumping into bed with someone terribly handsome, even if we’ve shared those videos.”

 

“You don’t have to be anyone you’re not,” she says. “You just be you.”

 

“Me is boring.”

 

“You is not boring,” Brienne points out. “You’ve got a fascinating job, with a lot of responsibility. You could be a trust fund kid, living off your Grandmother, but you’re making your way in the world which takes strength considering you’re annoying Olenna by doing so. You’ve got character, and sense, and a decency about you. Everyone says how nice you are, and what a good friend you are to everyone - look at you doling out painkillers and water this morning, even though you’re stressed and upset and exhausted? Everyone talks about you as if you’re the nicest person in Westeros, and we all know Davos Seaworth and his politics of being lovely. I also think you’re better looking than Loras, but he did steal Renly off me and I was really pissed off for the latter half of my teenage years, so I might be a little biased.”

 

“You and Renly?” He gapes, leaning forward.

 

“You’re deflecting.” Grinning now.

 

“But Renly is really quite-” Willas reaches for the words. “Manly gay?” Masculine, sure, but there’s never been any doubt to which way he butters his toast.

 

Her laughter is low and husky, like her voice.

 

* * *

 

However much Willas tries - and he tries so very hard, to the point of sneaking his suitcase into his car, desperate to disappear - Olenna bears down upon him with a determined expression on her paper-fine skinned face. She is on a mission, which is always a terrible thing for the someone she focusses on and never a chore for Grandmother. She wafts between chastened party-goers, eyeing the half-nakedness of Bolton who is really quite muscular under all that leather and definitely covered in bite marks, and Jon and his Wildling huddled together in a corner, sharing a piece of toast, before cornering Willas in the orangerie.

 

It is really a conservatory, but given Olenna’s flair for the dramatic, she has to go one better, doesn’t she?

 

“Willas?”

 

“Grandmother.” Brienne made him take some of the painkillers, the less spacey-making ones, and he is quietly sipping some tea that one of the lovely foreign maids brought him. They chatted for a few moments, and Willas felt guilty because she has a degree in political sciences but had to come to Westeros to earn money to send back to her elderly parents back in Naath. Missandei is far too good for this world, he decides, wondering if he can find her gainful employment at the Red Keep; Varys is always looking for talented individuals to add to his empire of Whatever The Fuck He Does. Spying and being coy, probably. Missy speaks most of the languages he can name, and Willas had an opportunity to try out his very rusty Lysene, before they launched into a comparison of High Valyrian and the languages of Volantis and the other Free Cities.

 

“Several young women were interested in making your acquaintance, but you disappeared last night.”

 

Everything starts going quietly wrong in his head as her little black eyes bore into Willas’ throbbing skull. Sometimes he is convinced Olenna can read his mind; she winkles out his secrets, like a professional sleuth. Holmesian, indeed, with her deductions.

 

“I was entertaining some of the guests, Grandmother.” Interrogation by the secret police would be less stressful. Searching questions and a light in his eyes by Varys would terrify him less.

 

The sharp gaze rakes across his face, flitting rapidly from eyeball to eyeball. When he was a child, Willas always broke with that look; he’d confess to anything, even the murder of the Mad King himself, to stop Olenna obliterating him with that stare.

 

“The more louche ones, I suppose.”

 

“Robb Stark, Margaery, Oberyn Martell,” and he slips the name in as casually as he can. “Jon Snow. Some others. Jaime and Brienne.” Best not to mention Theon. No one tends to mention Theon in polite society. It’s strange how someone who is heir to a few rocks on the westernmost fringes of the continent can be shunned, but then Greyjoys are the used car salesmen of the aristocratic families of Westeros. There’s something a little unscrupulous about every last one of them. Especially Euron, who, before last night was probably Willas’ favourite idle fantasy, but he has been blown out of the water by the frightening/beautiful Dornish gunship of Oberyn. Never send a pirate galleon against a sleek destroyer armed with precision torpedos when lust is on the line.

 

Willas isn’t quite sure where he’s going with that comparison, and now he’s deep in phallic-shaped weaponry coming at him from all angles.

 

“Hmmph. At least they have breeding, I suppose. It is a shame that you cannot marry the Stark girl, though she has attached herself to a Clegane of all people.”

 

“She’s very young, Grandmother, and she is very fond of Sandor.” Sansa - definitely very much the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen, apart from Missandei. For a moment Willas slips into one of his avoidance daydreams where he weds the maid to rescue her from all of this, taking her away from her life of drudgery to King’s Landing, where she can be appreciated for her cleverness.

 

“Fertile. Many siblings. I can break their relationship, and you can have the girl.” She could. Cat Stark would probably adore that.

 

“I don’t want to marry Sansa Stark.”

 

“Then who are you going to marry, Willas?” She folds her arms across her chest, and Willas braces himself for the forthcoming tongue lashing. It has been a long time coming, since he’s managed to avoid coming to Highgarden for at least six months, and Olenna bundles all of her indignities up to get him in person. Berating down a telephone is, apparently, so middle class.

 

“You are being most incalcitrant, and I am most irked with it all. I rely upon you to return some sort of honour to our family, to provide heirs and consistency. Loras refuses to see sense and settle with a decent woman, and ran to Meereen when I attempted to pin him down and have him reconsider his ‘lifestyle.’ Margaery insists on being with that reprobate Blackwater, however much I offer her to leave him. At least they cannot breed - imagine having that child in the family? It would steal the silver as much as look at you. And you? You insist upon working. You live in King’s Landing, too far away from where we can look after you. You disappoint me, despite everything that I have done for you. The finest education that I could buy, the best of everything, despite your ingratitude, your not obeying. You’re not getting younger, Willas. Are you all programmed to be disappointing? Are all of my grandchildren meant to break my heart? When others ask after my grandchildren, I can never admit to them what you do for a living. I have to lie to them, my dear. I cannot tell them my eldest grandchild, the heir, works for the government like some drudge. You should be here, doing as you are told, and yet you gallivant around the capital like you are some normal person. Well, Willas, as I have told you many times in the past - you are not normal. You are delicate, and need the care of your family, yet you insist on trying to be independent. You are a Tyrell, and I expect you to act like one even if you are physically incapable of acting as one.”

 

Tuning out. He nods where he needs to dutifully, used to the scorn born of her love. And yes, Olenna does love Willas; he knows that. She loves him not only because he is the heir to Highgarden, and the eldest son. He is the one person in the family that has the sense to be able to run Highgarden after she is gone, the only one who feels the pull of duty that’s haunted him his entire bloody life. Since he was very small she has been grooming him, nurturing him, in this sort of hothouse of Tyrell expectation, and often Willas finds himself wilting under the burning heat of her convictions, her ambition.

 

Of course she tries to change his siblings. No wonder Loras ran off to Essos and Margaery got herself involved with, apparently, the least eligible bachelor in Westeros.

 

Grandmother does like pointing out his disability when she’s feeling exceptionally venomous. It never stings so much these days, having dulled to a faint throb in his gut.

 

It always hurts, all of this. Willas exists in a maelstrom of familial ties, and his siblings overshadowing him by dint of being more attractive and vivacious, and his own internal self-doubt. In another life he’d be an academic, surrounded by heavy dusty tomes lecturing forth upon breeding the finest horses or hawks, in some cobwebbed forgotten tower of Highgarden. He’d have passionate gentleman’s arguments with equally passionate scientists about confirmation and mating for speed, or size, or strength. Long letters, letters in which he’d pour his being, because in his white ivory tower and surrounded by roses, that would be his only release.

 

Exhaustion overwhelms, and he feels himself sagging, held up by his trusty cane. To be perfectly honest, Willas wants to curl into bed, sleep until everything disappears. This. Olenna. The Duty he has to live with, now and forever. Work. Stannis Baratheon. His colleagues. His lonely existence involving too much wine and long lonely evenings in his small yet exclusively situated flat where the only person he talks to is the man at the reception desk.

 

“I don’t want to get married, Grandmother.” He says it before he registers what comes from his treacherous mouth.

 

“Of course you do. It is your duty.”

 

Before him yawns this chasm, this black gorge of nothing. In it lies sense, and marriage to some unsuspecting posh girl with child bearing hips. Expectation. Two children, one of each gender, to carry on the name of the Tyrells. Years of semi-loathing, trapped in an existence that isn’t of his own choosing, where the ghosts of ancestors watch, gleeful, because every last one of the buggers had to go through the same circus. At least in the past there were arranged marriages, rather than Olenna throwing women at him with the hope that at least one will stick.

 

Across the other side of this crevasse is something dangerous, and frightening. It stretches onward, until the horizon, and is part intoxicating and part horrifying in measure. Deserts, with mountains, and space - so much space. No black safety blanket abyssal depths where he cannot get out.

 

“No.”

 

“Willas.” Olenna’s tone, subtle, changes to a brittleness. She is a heartbeat away from really telling him off, berating, never screaming. Grandmother is too much of a lady to raise her voice in such a manner. No, she likes destroying with a smile on her lips and shrouded in the pretense that this is all for the good of whatever grandchild she is is tearing down. All for the good of the family. Which, he supposes, in some sort of twisted way is the truth.

 

“No. I’m not getting married. I’m not. I can’t do this any more, Olenna. I can’t play this game any more.”

 

He slumps, rubbing at his face, too out of it to care.

 

“Do you wish to be disinherited?” The trump card that she always plays, and usually, at this point, Willas backs down, rolls onto his back submissively, and is a good boy. This time, however, is different.

 

“To be honest, I don’t particularly care. Do it, if you want. Don’t do it. I really don’t care. Just please stop this. I can’t deal with this any more. All I want is to go home, be me, and not have to think about being this - whatever this is - for a little while. Please stop this? I don’t want to play this game, Nana.” The name from childhood slips in, unbidden, and Willas finds his nose prickling as tears threaten. “I’m tired, and fed up, and I want to go home to King’s Landing and just be me.”

 

Her expression calcifies into a rictus of distaste.

 

“Act what you are, Willas, not like some pathetic child.”

 

Everything is treacle as he leans in, kisses her lightly upon her cheek, and for the first time in his life, and probably in Olenna’s, someone walks away from the Queen of Thorns without a goodbye.

 

* * *

 

It hits him as he sits in the driving seat of his little car, the one with the modifications and the automatic gearbox which helps because Willas’ knee never liked manual controls, and he stares into space.

 

“What have I done?”

 

He turned his back. On Olenna Tyrell. Who is going to. Oh Gods. She’ll go absolutely nuclear. Totally and utterly explosive. The Reach will never be the same again. The fallout will be. Oh Gods.

 

He fumbles for his phone, scrabbling the screen open, ignoring the missed Whatsapp messages glowing at him, and dials a number.

 

_Margie?_

 

_Willas. It is ten in the morning, it is a Sunday, and I’ve got a hangover. Please let this be good or I’m going to set Bronn on you._

 

_I just. Oh. I…_

 

No crying. Tyrells don’t cry. The irony of that makes Willas laugh, slightly hysterical, because however much he tries to deny his family influence, he’s carved in the image that Olenna deigned fit for the heir of Highgarden.

 

_Wil?_

 

_I just. I’m. Going home. Just thought you might. Want to know.. So. You know. Don’t miss me. When I’m not there._

 

_Wil? What’s happened? Where are you? I’m coming. Bronn? Where’s my bra? No, doesn’t matter. Where are you? I’ll come to you._

 

_I’ll be fin-_

 

_Where are you?_

 

_...in the car._

 

_Five minutes, okay? Don’t you dare drive off without talking, Willas Tyrell._

 

She is there in four, mascara smudged under her eyes like a raccoon, wearing one of Bronn’s t-shirts and a long floaty skirt. It is testament to Margaery’s worry that she hasn’t even brushed her hair, which is a tangled mess that only curling tongs and heavy duty brushing can hope to tame.

 

“I told Olenna I don’t want to get married. She got cross, and I. Walked out on her. Just left.”

 

“Finally,” she breathes, her hand catching Willas’ tightly. Her nail varnish is frosted peach, a shimmer along the perfectly manicured tips. “Finally, you’re breaking free of her.”

 

“I feel like I want to cry, and I don’t know why.”

 

Margie smiles, all dimples and crooked lips. No wonder men fall in love with her on a daily basis.

 

“Guilt is an awful thing, especially when Olenna uses it as a weapon. I know she works more on you, because you’re the eldest, but me and Loras understand what it’s like. We love Grandmother, and I’m far more like her than you two, but she wants to have show ponies as grandchildren, not people. It’s okay to cry, by the way. Or throw things. I find throwing things very relaxing, especially if they’re breakable.”

 

“How do you cope with it all?”

 

“I screw Bronn twice a day.” That smile deepens, becomes a wonky grin. “Loras screws an entire continent. Sex is a useful tool in the Tyrell arsenal, but Olenna never told us that, did she? Sex gets us what we want, which for me is a man that annoys Grandmother to the point of a hernia, and, well, Loras is a different sort of gay to you. You’re more romantic. You’re the nice one in this family, Wil. You’d never use other people for revenge, as it isn’t your nature. Loras just seriously likes the cock. We need to all get together at yours, when we can, and bitch about men.”

 

It would be nice to have his siblings there. Loras, all sleek and beautiful, and annoying as only little brothers can be. Recent photos on Instagram indicate he’s cut off his curls, got a tan and a tastefully Olenna-annoying tattoo of a rose on his hip. He’s always surrounded by a myriad of very handsome dark-haired men who have a passing resemblance to Renly Baratheon. For the first time, for a long while, probably since Loras hit eighteen and Olenna started plotting his inevitable downfall to marriage, children, and becoming the sort of non-embarrassing adult she envisages, little brother looks happy.

 

“Is he coming to Westeros?”

 

“He might. Renly’s been in touch - he’s out of the army now.”

 

“Stannis said he was.”

 

“I contemplated screwing Stannis, but I thought that would make Olenna far too excited. He’s far too rich.”

 

“Oh Gods, Margie!”

 

“He’s a silver fox!”

 

“He’s my boss! I’ve seen him covered in semen!”

 

“Lucky you,” she whispers, all amused and throaty. “How many men have you seen covered in semen?”

 

“...six.”

 

“Oh my Gods, you tart!”

 

“No, not like that. Oh Gods, that sounds so wrong. Um. Look. Two okay, and then mystery dick pic man, so that’s three, but he doesn’t count because that’s on my phone screen. There was the Great Debacle of two years ago, when one of the shelves in the freezers shattered and we had to clean that up, so Stannis, Clegane and, ugh. Bolton as well.” Which is wrong. Wrong. Terrifying. Though Ramsay is really quite well built, but no. No. No. Seriously bad. Wrong. Wrong. Bad.

 

“You need to sleep with someone, Willas. It’ll make you feel better - the healing power of sex is all-consuming, and orgasms will relax you. You’re always so wound-up about everything, so tense. No wonder you can’t sleep. Why don’t you get in touch with mystery dick pic man? Or there is always Oberyn Martell, he seemed quite keen last night?”

 

Willas stares into the rear view mirror, swallows, feels like this is the sort of sisterly bonding moment that encourages admitting things.

 

“He is mystery dick pic man. Oberyn is him.”

 

Margaery’s face is an absolute picture. She stares, eyes widening, mouth slack.

 

“Oberyn has been trying to seduce you for weeks via text? Oberyn Martell? Our Oberyn?” Her hand, still in Willas’, squeezes. “But he’s gorgeous! You totally have to shag him. The experience in itself would be one of life’s bucket list tick offs! How do you know it’s him? Did you see him naked last night and identify certain features?” Margaery is the sort to run and run with this, glowing with gossip. She’d build it up to them having torrid sex against a wall or something, which Willas has never done in his life. He’s strictly been an in bed sort of lover, because of his knee, and because it is How Things Are Done. Mostly. Not in the porn that he sometimes watches. Someone had sex with someone in a fountain once, and he’s pondered the logistics of that. Silicone based lube, obviously, but wouldn’t that be cold? A shower perhaps, or a hot tub. A hot tub would be lovely, actually.

 

“You’ve glazed over.” Giggling. Margaery is giggling.

 

“Sorry. I was-”

 

“Don’t think too deeply about it, and just do it. Think about it as your gift to yourself for finally telling Olenna to sod off and stop harassing you. Do you realise how cute you and Oberyn would look together? If I wasn’t your sister, I’d ask for a video since you two seem so fond of recording stuff. Bronn and I are always looking for fun things to watch.”

 

“...”

 

“The look on your face right now is something that I live for, brother of mine.”

 

* * *

 

**_06.18: Sweet one, I apologise for last night. Reading back what I sent, after what occurred between us, I see that I was wrong to send these messages. Drinking is no excuse. I apologise wholeheartedly for my actions._ **

 

**_06.20: You are pretty. This I do not apologise for stating._ **

 

**_06.21: The invitation to dine remains._ **

 

**_06.24: No. Not pretty. Beautiful. In heart and spirit and look. I am enamoured._ **

 

**_09.17: I came to find you and discover that your time has been claimed by another. Your grandmother speaks at you, and I wish to scoop you into my arms and tell the woman that she does not deserve a boy like you. Her words are unforgivable. Yet you stand and take them, and my heart hurts._ **

 

**_09.24: I should not eavesdrop, yet I find myself unable to tear away._ **

 

**_09.28: You left her. You turned your back and walked from her. There is a strength in you, dearest Willas. A strength, a magnificence. She stands as if she is struck, watching you leave, hands in fists. Her poison does not touch you, she thinks, though I know you must suffer. No one can be berated, belittled, and not feel the pain of words upon their flesh_ **

 

**_10.17: Your sister says you have left for King’s Landing. I wish you safe journey._ **

* * *

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sings the Song of Smut*

* * *

 

 

After a shower, Willas feels vaguely more human. Still numb, still in some sort of shock he supposes because everything hasn’t quite seeped into his head - and when it does the meltdown will be spectacular - but he is home, in his flat, where everything is his. Neat, tidy, in the right place, and hugely comforting, like a warm hug from someone he admires and loves. Highgarden was where he lived for twenty one years, before he managed to escape the cloying machinations of Olenna, and even though the vast house is beautifully appointed and filled with expensive treasures and the sort of richness collected over centuries, he prefers his magnolia-painted apartment with the wide sash windowed view over Flea Bottom toward the Red Keep. Safe, he supposes. He feels safe.

 

Shaving doesn’t happen. To hells with shaving! A moment of bravado means he is slightly scratchy around the jaw. Olenna hates facial hair, says it demonstrates a sloppy mind and a lack of personal care. No wonder Loras likes Renly with his beard, and Margaery encourages Bronn’s scruffiness. No wonder he thinks Oberyn’s moustache and stubble are mind-meltingly sexy, especially against his own skin as they-

 

No. He’s not thinking about that now. He needs processing time. Willas, and his tidy efficient mind, often addled with wine, needs to really consider what is to be done about that.

 

He opens Whatsapp, reads the latest messages again. Sighs.

 

Coffee will help.

 

He’s just switched on the kettle, pondering biscuits for a late lunch which is the act of a reprobate, but since Willas walked out on Olenna, he’s allowed these fits of madness, when someone knocks at the door. On a Sunday afternoon? It isn’t like Willas is expecting anyone. Not that he ever does, but the timing is strange, and odd, and for a moment he wonders if the King’s Landing serial killer has someone snuck past the concierge, but realises, sensibly, that Hotah could take down large land-based mammals with his bare hands.

 

He should put on a shirt. Answering the door without a top on is quite rebellious, however, and since he’s now a rebellious sort of man who tells his Grandmother he’s not going to get married, Willas girds his loins and opens the door  _ sans _ t-shirt.

 

Oh.

 

Oh Gods.

 

Dark eyes glow as Oberyn’s gaze trails downward, over bruises and scars and that tiny mark left by a slightly chipped front tooth on Willas’ collarbone.

 

“Um.”

 

“I brought wine.”

 

“Oh. Right.” It is a point of honour that Willas is polite, and well-bred, and above letting handsome men with alcohol stand in the hallway when they could be in his flat. Autopilot, he supposes, feels like this; an out-of-body experience where he’s soaring above all. “Would you like to come in?”

 

Their hands brush as Oberyn insinuates himself inside. He smells good, and looks better, and Willas feels damnation lurking upon his shoulders. In cartoons, when decisions are to be made, little demons and angels squabble over outcomes. For him, at this precise moment in time, there is nothing but tiny angel!Willas being thoroughly debauched, and definitely enjoying the experience, by a tiny devil that is definitely shaped as Oberyn. 

 

“I marked you. I must be more careful.”

 

Willas flees to the safety of the kitchen, fumbling for mugs, though Oberyn follows, loose-limbed and panther-sleek.

 

“Oh, it’s nothing. I’m used to bruises, I get covered in them all the time. It comes to a point where another one just shows up and gets added to the collection, really. I’ve got coffee? I can make coffee? I use one of those stovetop pots, so it’s fresh. Or there’s tea, I’ve got normal tea, and then fruity ones that might be out of date since I don’t drink them but others do, so I got them in just in case, or there’s cocoa? Hot chocolate? I might have chai, somewhere, which is ever so nice, and- I’m babbling, aren’t I? Oh Gods. I’m just talking nonsense now, I’m such an id-”

 

Lips brush the nape of his neck, and he dries up like the River Mander during a late summer drought. Thankfully no mugs are sacrificed to the God of Willas’ Internal Flailing.

 

“Your sister told me your address. I did not stalk you.”

 

“She’s. I. Just.” Shivering. Oberyn is just a little taller than him, and they fit together most interestingly as the long leanly muscled body presses against his back.

 

“I needed to speak with you, most urgently, for I am overwhelmed with how brave you are, beautiful boy. So very brave. I am proud of you, Willas, for that woman is a harpy. I disliked her before, but her words to you make me despise the air she breathes. You show much spirit, in your quiet and gentle way, sweet Willas.” Warm hands wind about his waist, just below the flare of his ribs, calloused from handling horses, and close combat, and all sorts of delicious wild fantasies that threaten to whirl through Willas’ spaced-out mind.

 

Pirates. Why is it always pirates?

 

“You came to King’s Landing.” Obviously. Willas kicks himself.

 

“You came home, and I followed.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Stubble teases, sending gooseflesh and another of those full body shivers. Oberyn’s cheek rests upon his shoulder as his mouth caresses the soft bit of skin under Willas’ ear. It is singularly the most erotic thing he’s ever experienced in his entire life, even more than wanking videos made just for him, and the Dornishman’s fiercely intelligent, highly-perverted mind.

 

“Yet you answer the door with no shirt, and I find myself contemplating your neck with my lips. How rude of me, sweet boy, to leap upon you the moment you allow me into your home.”

 

“Yes.” Words of more than one syllable don’t exist any more, at least to be spoken. “Quite.”

 

Frustratingly, thankfully, all emotions, arms relinquish their hold, that teasing mouth detaches, and Oberyn steps back. The space is still too close, yet too far, and Willas finds himself caught between narrowing the gap and wrapping himself around the man like some sort of over-enthusiastic climbing plant, or maintaining sensible decorum because he isn’t the sort of person who just falls into bed with someone else. Even if they are the sexiest man in Westeros. Even if he is Willas Tyrell, who told Olenna that he wasn’t playing her game any more.

 

He does the next best thing. Willas opens the wine, shakingly pours two large glasses, and takes a long gulp. Surprisingly, the red liquid is sweet and delicious; none of that sour Dornish that seems so popular in the south, and he finds himself reading the label with interest.

 

“I’ve never had Dornish port before.”

 

“It is the most elegant of drinks. Others just play with their ports, but I take my wines most seriously.”

 

“It’s lovely.”

 

“Like you. It is sweet, and strong, and lingers in the senses long after it is finished. Intoxicating, yet strangely reserved in nature. Understated. When raised to the light, the depths are evident.”

 

“...I’m not sure if that’s romantic or a bit, you know. A bit cheesy.”

 

“Cheese and port are most perfect together,” Oberyn murmurs, over the rim of his glass. He really is unfairly beautiful. 

 

“Are you calling yourself cheese? If you were a cheese, I’ve no idea what one you’d be. You’d be something, oh. Spicy? Leyden? That’s got cumin and caraway, so that’s quite-”

 

“You are most unlike any other person I have met, sweet boy.”

 

“Margie says I’m weird.” 

 

“Delightful.” Oberyn tops up the glass once more, and Willas, appalled at himself, realises he downed the entire thing with nerves. “The word she seeks and does not find is delightful.”

 

* * *

  
  
“Favourite colour,” Willas murmurs. His head is pillowed upon Oberyn’s impressive thighs, muscles shifting under his hair, and every so often he is fed a tiny tasty bite of Pentoshi prawns in spiced sauce. There was a slight incident where some of the sauce dripped onto his bare chest, but Martell, rising to the occasion, manfully licked the spot clean with his clever tongue.

 

Gods. That tongue.

 

No one has ever licked Willas before. He finds, in his drunken haze - they finished the port and broke open the Arbour Gold much to Oberyn’s amusement, for everything here is too sweet and floral in note, the bouquet apparently all wrong, and Willas’ palate needs resetting to something less sugary - that he might encourage it. Not that they are in licking stage yet. They are in tipsy mode, with takeaway, and are asking each other questions.

 

Willas refuses to sleep with anyone until he’s got to know them more, and apparently, according to Oberyn, this is the fast-track way of doing so. He also promised that if Willas wished to not make love with him, then he would not force the issue, or demand recompense for his time, and is willing to wait for ‘such rare beauty and wondrous fascination.’

 

Oberyn’s quite lovely. More than quite, actually. Hugely, ridiculously, amazingly lovely.

 

“Bronze. It has a lustre that appeals. Yours?”

 

“Anything I can spill wine on and have it blend in. Red? Maybe red. I like red.” Not as much as he likes Oberyn at this moment in time, because drink makes him softer, almost relaxed, tension dripping from him with each syllable.

 

“Clumsy boy. We are the colours of house Martell, when we are together. Favourite television show?”

 

“Oh, easy!  _ Dany the Grumpkin Slayer _ .”

 

“Ah. Thorne and his librarian.” Oberyn’s eyes glitter, and for a moment he is a shark, a piranha, some sort of angry sea-based fish hungry for manflesh. “Brienne writes perverse stories about the vampire and the watcher. She cannot watch Thorne chained in the bathtub without contemplating.”

 

“Brienne writes that?!”

 

“Mmm. She asks that I read the sex scenes for her to ensure accuracy.”

 

Willas gapes, guppyesque. “But she seems so. So?” Sensible. Nice. Normal. Brienne-y.

 

“Hidden depths.” Oberyn raises a long index finger to stress the point. 

 

“Oh. Yes.” Of course. Everyone has them. Everyone is a lovely ruby port, apart from those who are the tawny kind. Ports. In general. Everyone is.

 

“I could not choose between her and Jaime. They are most lovely. I would have to have them both, at the same time. I am sure that handsome Jaime would be in the middle, between magnificent Brienne and I, as we use him for our pleasure.” 

 

“Oh. Gods.” Not that he’s into women, whatsoever, but this is Brienne, who is, well, if she did have a brother, or if he did have to sleep with a woman, it’d be her or Asha, and she’s so tall and broad and fascinating, and perhaps he does have a tiny thing for her so, for his sake, it’s lucky that she’s married to Jaime, who is, well, the second sexiest man in Westeros after Oberyn and Euron. No, the third sexiest man in Westeros after Oberyn, Euron, and possibly Beric Dondarrion. No, the fourth-

 

This could go on for some time.

 

“Come back to me, little one,” Oberyn murmurs, smiling. He has spectacular teeth. “You are miles away.”

 

“Sorry. I drift off sometimes. Quite a lot, actually. Some sort of dreaming while I’m awake, I think?” He really is awful for it - someone says something, Willas considers, and then he’s in his head, having odd little fantasies, and not at all in the real world. Apparently, according to the internet, it is something to do with dealing with stress. He thinks it’s more likely to be the fault of the wine.

 

Oberyn eats the forkful of food himself and then leans over to the coffee table, neatly reboxing everything with a flourish of beautiful hands. For a moment, drunk on proximity, port, and his own naughty rebelliousness, Willas considers wriggling onto his stomach and just burying his face into the tightly be-jeaned crotch of his, um. What would Oberyn be to him? Lover, no. They’ve not even kissed, which is awful, and needs to be remedied because he, Willas Tyrell, doesn’t give a damn about rules, and regulations. He walked out on Olenna! He is, as is often said in appalling action films he wakes up to after getting drunk on the settee and falling asleep whilst Whatsapping, a ‘bad-ass motherfucker who don’t take no shit from anyone.’

 

His Oberyn? That is soft, and jellyish, and that’s fine for about now.

 

“You drift, Willas. You drift with suggestion. Perhaps I wish to see what visions engulf you?”

 

“Jaime is very handsome,” he admits. “Brienne makes me think things.”

 

“What things?” Fingertips stroke through his hair, nails scritching slightly at his scalp, and Willas almost moans.

 

“About girls. Not that I’ve. With girls. Just Brienne really is magnificent.”

 

“Have you slept with anyone?” If anyone else asked him that, it could be super embarrassing, but Oberyn is the sort of person to whom divulging this information is not a frightening thing. He is perfectly accepting of everything, and everyone, apart from those he dislikes. Willas is quite sure that those who are loathed by the Dornishman quite often meet a sticky ending, probably poisoned, or impaled on a spear, or something else equally southern.

 

“I’ve had two boyfriends, and we had sex. It was nice.”

 

Something darkens in those coffee-rich eyes, and it makes Willas squirm, breathless. For some reason, Oberyn seems to see those words as a challenge.

 

“Sex is not nice. Sex is an experience. It should not be merely ‘nice.’”

 

The rabbit hole opens again, that one that Willas finds himself teetering upon every so often when it comes to Oberyn Martell. Follow the white rabbit to Wonderland, or remain himself, Willas? Or, at least, stay as the old version, who doesn’t challenge Grandmothers, or walk out on conversations, or ends up in his flat with a man who he’s sexted constantly for more than two whole weeks being fed and stroked and gazed upon with heated lusting hunger that sends all his nerve endings singing with want and a strangely delicious sort of fear?

 

Oh. Of course.

 

Willas did not change when he left Olenna standing in the conservatory/orangerie. Not then. Willas changed when he replied to that dick pic. The world changed the moment Willas struck up conversation, didn’t delete the photo, accepted the flirting because he was lonely, and exhausted, and lost in his own little world of work and not work with nothing in between.

 

Everything changed the moment he stroked himself that first time.

 

“When you wrote those things, and said them,” he ventures, carefully treading, unaware of the slight slur making his usually perfect pronunciation a drawl of consonants, “did you mean them?”

 

“Which things?” Oberyn has a lovely voice. 

 

“The sex things.” Obviously. Idiot. Willas berates himself. “The, um. Tongues. Thing. Down there.” Not that he’s thought about that, because it seems really quite filthy, and wrong, and perverted, and all of those things that decent people shouldn’t even consider. Not that he’s researched it. Thoroughly.

 

“Ah, sweet boy, stepping from ‘nice’ sex straight to rimming.” A quirk of those sensual lips, a warmth of appreciation. “Such innocence, such debauchery, wrapped in a lovely package for me to unwrap.”

 

“I had to look it up on the internet,” he sighs, glowing. The curse of Willas’ blushing strikes again, pinking his chest and neck, blazing his cheeks uncomfortably warm.

 

“The definition, or evidence of the deed?”

 

“Oh. Gods. Um.”

 

Oberyn’s laugh is as smokily intoxicating as his voice, and he looks very fond as his fingers trail across Willas’ faintly clammy forehead, along the length of his patrician nose, caressing his lips. For a moment everything freezes, all concentrated on the whirls and calloused pads drifting, before Willas, throwing caution to the wind as he is an independant man who doesn’t need any Grandmother, lightly kisses the arousingly roughened skin.

 

“You make it very difficult. I am resigned to behaving. Yet I would have you here, on the sofa, even if I wish to drag you to bed and explore you.” Liquid sex. That’s what Oberyn’s voice is. Sex distilled into a Dornish accent and a low teasing inflection. “Nice sex happens in beds, does it not? Good sex, exquisite sex, happens wherever it needs to. Beds. Settees. Toilet cubicles. Against the wall in a dark filthy alley as the wetness soaks your shirt and I drive my cock into your willing body. In public, curled together as if we just embrace lazily upon a picnic blanket, in beautiful parkland. In a club, upon the dance floor, as we grind and frot and drive each other to climax.”

 

“Your voice-”

 

“Sucking your beautiful cock while caught in a traffic jam. In bed. In bed, where the memories of ‘nice’ sex can be obliterated with my mouth, and tongue,” and Willas whimpers, helpless and hard and oh Gods he is so turned on, and Oberyn knows it, the bastard, because a hand strokes lightly across his chest, his leanish belly, down to the waistband of his soft jogging bottoms that he wears around the house because they’re so comfortable, and really, perhaps he should have changed into something less slobby, but, oh Gods, Oberyn!

 

“Please?” His voice, an octave higher than normal, thickens.

 

“What do you wish for, my little rebel?”

 

A wildness of everything attacks, all at once. They’ve not even snogged. Not even kissed. Yet Oberyn Martell has his hand about two inches away from Willas’ genitalia, and approaching at a now glacial, frustrating pace, and he doesn’t know what to do. He’s lost. He’s never had this choice, this smorgasbord of suggestion. His previous boyfriends, and that sort of insinuates that Oberyn is his third ever boyfriend, and perhaps they should talk about this, but how is he supposed to when there is a hand so near his cock? His previous boyfriends were all very traditional about this. Vanilla. But Oberyn is anything but.

 

Oberyn is cinnamon.

 

Maybe Margie is right and he deserves just a little enjoyment, a day where he can just break the chains of normal existence for a moment and just...have something that he doesn’t overthink, obsess about, worry himself to wine and insomnia.

 

“Tell me?” 

 

His hand finds the leanly strong wrist, and Willas swallows, saliva drying on his tongue, and damns himself.

 

“Would you mind awfully if you could please suck my cock? Sorry.”

 

It is, in all essence, possibly the most Willas thing to say, ever. 

 

“How could I not be charmed with such a polite request, sweet one?” The grin is both dazzling and dripping lust, the man’s expression glittering with this hunger that makes Willas feel rather like a mouse in the gaze of a ravenous snake.

 

Oh Gods. He’s just asked Oberyn Martell, who probably gives the best head in the entirety of Westeros, to give him oral sex. Oh Gods. Panic. He panics, whimpers, goes to say he’s sorry once more because really, perhaps this rebellion thing isn’t quite his cup of tea, his bag, his thing, before Oberyn’s beautiful mouth, with those full passionate lips, finds his own.

 

The kiss is brief at worst, and mind blowing at best, because for all the snogging he’s done - and Willas has kissed four people in his life, so has some experience - this has something more than just labial manipulation. Sensuality. Sexiness. Want. For all of this kissing lark, and, fine, he’s not hugely knowledgeable about it, because it never really gripped him, like sex never set his world alight, this almost chaste press of lips and not even a hint of tongue is something that he wants more of. Lots more. And tongue. Hands in his hair, tilting his jaw for the perfect angle. The bump of his straight nose against the glorious aquilinity of Oberyn’s. The moaning, and heat, and saliva, and messiness that seems to be involved in seriously good kissing.

 

“I’m going to die.”

 

“Many times,” Oberyn promises, removing his shirt with admirable elegance and exposing acres of athletically sleek muscle, chest hair, and that piercing glittering bronze in his left nipple.

 

* * *

 

Sex is a strange thing, and to be honest Willas has never been much of a fan. The two boyfriends tended towards the tried and tested formula of a bit of foreplay, the usual slightly uninspired sex part, and the rolling over and falling asleep leaving him staring at the ceiling, a little sore, and possibly emotionally unfulfilled. The touching? Perfunctory. The kissing? Mechanical. The whole experience was, as sex goes, a rather off-putting, messy necessity of being in a relationship. For a while Willas was quite convinced that perhaps his friends were correct, and he definitely had asexual tendencies. He loved the romance, the holding hands, the flirting, the couple-y bits - they were lovely. The rest of it all seemed a little too much effort for not enough reward, but he still had sex, obviously, because his boyfriends liked it and he wanted them to feel pleasured and fulfilled. Honestly? He could have left the entire thing behind and gone to make a nice cup of tea.

 

They remain in the living room because apparently the carpet is sufficiently padded for Oberyn’s knees, though he does snag one of those pointless cushions that came with the settee for extra protection, before he slithers, lean and serpentine, onto the floor.

 

Willas’ experience of oral sex has mostly been from the giving end of things, with a little receiving if his boyfriends wanted to try persuade him towards something a little more exotic than vanilla. Not that it happened much, especially after the fluffy handcuffs debacle when it turned out that he was allergic to whatever the fake fur wrapped around the metal consisted of, and had to go to the chemist for emergency packets of antihistamine. That was the death knell of that particular relationship, anyhow.

 

“Hips up,” Oberyn murmurs, fingers catching in the fabric of Willas’ trousers, tugging, and.

 

Oh Gods. The scars. He usually manages to conceal them a little, with careful lighting, or tangled bedsheets, but here, naked, on a settee, in the middle of the living room, there is no place for Willas to hide.

 

“Sorry about my leg,” he mumbles, drunk and apologetic. “It’s horrid, I know.”

 

Material slithers down his thighs, bumps over his nervous erection.

 

Willas’ knee is a marvel of modern science; four operations, over a number of years, with enough pins and rods to set off various metal detectors at airports which means he very rarely travels abroad without a doctor’s note and a complete set of itemised x-rays as explanation. The thing works, mostly, and is often painful, but the bionic interior is nothing compared to the mess of raised tissue and slightly wasted muscle tone. At least he isn’t confined to the wheelchair that was the bane of his existence from the ages of twelve to fourteen, during which Olenna scented blood and dug her claws more securely into her grandson.

 

Downwards the dark grey cotton slips, over his knee, and Willas prepares himself for the worst.

 

“Willas?” Softly, and he realises he’s squeezed his eyes tightly shut in anticipation of the reaction. One of his boyfriends, the first one, who came on the scene when Willas escaped to university and was even more naive, told him the only reason that they got together was because ‘someone needs to do something nice for cripples, sometimes.’

 

That still stings, sometimes, especially when he’s awake and fretting at two in the morning.

 

“Sorry.”

 

Oberyn sighs, breath hot against the wreck of Willas’ leg, before nuzzling lightly at the scars with his Dornish curve of a nose.

 

Oh. Unexpected.

 

“Sweet boy, you should try and keep quiet for once, yes? Here I am, about to worship you, and you try and dissuade me from doing so. Must I gag that pretty mouth of yours?”

 

“Sorry. I am. I’m just out of practice. With this. I just.” The failure is complete, and Willas, helpless, touches the planes of warm olive skin stretching across Oberyn’s cheek. “I’m not very good at this.”

 

“I think no one has shown you what it is to be adored.” A kiss, lingering, finds his battered kneecap. It is the first time that someone has ever touched Willas’ leg without pitying the damage. “I think no one has bothered to show you that you are worthy of lust, my rose. I think,” and there is that glitter again, that Willas quiveringly registers as want and heat and sex, “you have never been made love to by someone who knows how to make love to someone as lovely as you. Let me show you. Let this happen. Allow yourself this, if you wish for this. If you do not, or you change your mind, then we shall curl together and talk more - I will not force you to do anything you do not desire.”

 

No movement. Oberyn remains still, breathing steady and warm against the scarred flesh. He gives the choice. He does not push. He kneels there, so gloriously, spectacularly handsome, and lets the decision be, above all, Willas’ own.

 

That goes to his head even more than the rich Dornish port; to have the autonomy to make a choice upon such a matter is a wonderful, terrible thing. His whole life has been dominated by others making decisions for him, and now Oberyn, who Willas likes, and respects, and fancies, allows him this? Allows him more than his family does, and touches his scars besides?

 

“Only if you don’t mind. Please. Sorry.”

 

That grin is brilliant, and feral; as if the man hasn’t eaten in weeks. “You seem to think this is a chore, perhaps? Ah, Willas. This is no chore. I find sensuality in all carnal acts. I was not lying when I said that drinking makes me wish to suck you, feel your climax upon my tongue, swallow your essence.”

 

“Oh Gods. Oberyn. Please.”

 

How can the man like something that is debasing? Or, at least, in Willas’ limited experience it is, with selfish boyfriends who wanted nothing but orgasm. Obviously in porn it’s different, but that’s porn, but even in the amateur stuff he guiltily prefers because everything else is so polished and clinical, they seem to really enjoy the blowjob part.

 

“Hips up once more.” Boxers are all that are left between being slightly clothed and being completely naked with the most attractive man in Westeros ready to dive on him at a moment’s notice. It would be easy to stop this, right now, say that perhaps they should do some kissing, or have something more to drink? Wine. Really good idea. Wine, sipping delicately at some rich bodied sweet Dornish red as Oberyn Martell crawls between his thighs, smirking, and just. Sucks him.

 

“Hips, sweet one.”

 

Willas comes back to himself, blearily, hyper-aware of his tented undergarments, and, because, dammit, he is a rebel, he told Olenna Tyrell he isn’t marrying, he doesn’t give any fucks like a honey badger - whatever that is, he’s not sure, he needs to Google that - and even more because he wants this more than anything he’s ever wanted, he pushes the sensible checked cotton boxers from his body and reveals his cock to the exacting and almost professional gaze of Oberyn.

 

Who moans.

 

Willas finds himself whimpering in return because nothing - nothing - is as mind-meltingly erotic as being leered at with the full force of dark Dornish eyes.

 

“Beautiful. Perfect.” A tilt of Oberyn’s head, a dazzlingly perverse grin. “Edible.”

 

“Please…?”

 

Fingers trail lightning up the insides of his legs, from ankle bone, calf, the ticklish bit behind his knees that makes Willas gasp and squirm with heightened sensation, to slowly, deliberately, spread his thighs that little wider. Presenting, as it were, the jut of his cock, ripe for the taking.

 

The world ends the moment Oberyn’s tongue licks a long, deliberate stripe from root to head, tasting and assessing and lapping with intent. Everything shrinks; all that is important is the slick wetness of muscle caressing his length, then lips wrapping around the shaft, before. Oh Gods. No gag reflex. Oberyn Martell has no gag reflex and Willas is babbling about that. Just talking, helplessly, commenting on the way the squirmy tongue traces patterns, the sweet suction as a rhythm is found, how he’s desperately not trying to start thrusting and oh, that’s so difficult when Oberyn is swallowing when he’s deep in the welcoming heat and warmth of that skilled, wanton mouth, and how beautiful Oberyn is, and how handsome, and how much he wants to do this to Oberyn, and Oberyn, Oberyn….Oberyn!

 

Wailing, hands buried in Oberyn’s tangled dark hair, the scrape of stubble against his groin and balls just too exquisite, still gabbling nonsense and promises and desperation, Willas Tyrell reaches his climax with an enthusiasm that he never knew he possessed.

 

Embarrassingly, the affair, from beginning to end, takes approximately a minute and a half.

 

* * *

 

“...I did a running commentary.” Willas did. For the entire minute and a half. He’s caught between mortified and stunned, because, without doubt, that blowjob was the best thing that has ever happened to him in the bedroom in his entire life.

 

And they weren’t even in the bedroom.

 

“And so complementary you were, sweet one, that I am glowing.” Oberyn lounges. He’s taken the opportunity to remove his trousers, and his underwear is far more chic and attractive than the old-fashioned boxers Willas wears. They are tight, and black, and fitted boxer-briefs that cling to really not inconsiderable parts of Martell. He’s quite, well, talented in the downstairs region. Willas tries to not stare, but, as is usual with these things, he finds himself drawn to the hidden promises concealed in clinging fabric. He tried to reciprocate, but was gently batted away as Oberyn explained that he is perfectly willing to wait, and that tonight is all for his sweet rose’s pleasure.

 

Neither of his previous boyfriends did that. They always expected something in return.

 

To be honest, Willas is slowly coming to realise his two previous boyfriends were, in the words of the poets, complete and utter dickheads.

 

The cuddling is unexpected, and entirely welcome. Bonelessly he nestles into the reassuringly furry tanned chest, nose-to-nipple with the piercing that he idly nudges, sleepy and sated.

 

“Did it hurt, having it done?”

 

“Deliciously.” A slow cat-has-the-cream smirk. 

 

“Oh.” He processes, or at least tries to, and gives up when the synapses responsible for higher levels of thought refuse to fire. They, like the rest of his brain, are the mental equivalent of jam - as if all sense and reason has been syphoned out of his head by the act of having his cock sucked by the most handsome, sexy, insanely good at sucking cocks man who has ever existed.

 

“Will you stay?” Whoever said that has the right idea. Willas blinks, before realising that it is his voice, and his request.

 

“Yes.” No hesitation.

 

Willas smiles against warm skin.

 

* * *

 


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

 

 

Waking up, his heart pounding, Willas realises he’s slept through the alarm. All of them. It is almost eight in the morning, he is due at work, and, for the first time in years, he slept the entire night through.

 

Stannis is going to kill him. He’s late. He’ll be late. He’ll die.

 

No time for a shower. He fumbles into underwear and trousers, zipping and buttoning as he frantically rummages for a shirt. That’s on. Right. Teeth. Toothpaste all over his shirt. No! Teeth cleaned, new shirt, and he buttons it with fingers that refuse. To. Work. Tie. He’ll do that on the Tube, or in the lift up to the office. Shoes. No. Socks, then shoes. At least there aren’t any laces, thank the Seven for slip-ons. Hair. Gods, he looks awful. Rumpled, and the pillow has left an imprint, and what’s he going to do about the state of his stupid hair that refuses to lie down. Under the tap. There. Wet hair, stupid curls. He’s out of hair product. It’ll just have to dry naturally, and he’ll look like a Winterdale ewe before shearing with the stupid ringlets it’ll form. Into the living room. Man bag, check. Jacket? No time for a jacket, it’ll just have to not rain. Keys. Keys. Where are they keys and-?

 

Oberyn. Naked apart from the abandoned jogging bottoms of the previous evening. Watching him.

 

Willas pauses, huge-eyed and panicking, aware of the sweat prickling the small of his back.

 

“I’m late. For work. Stannis’ll be so-”

 

“You are delightful when you worry.” How a man can sashay, he’s not quite sure, and this isn’t the time to even think about this, but Oberyn sashays over, mug in hand. The flat smells of strong coffee and spices, and oatmeal, and Dornishman.

 

“I have to go. You can stay. Of course you can, please, yes. Unless you need to go? Then that’s fine. I’m sure you’ve got all sorts of important things to be doing! Just pull the door closed. I am so dead. Stannis will be so cross, and -” To stop himself burying his face into the comforting warmth of Oberyn’s shoulder, Willas flails, with his hands, almost knocking the coffee from the man’s grasp.

 

“Ah, Stannis. Such a fiercely driven man.” 

 

“Very strict. Terribly scary,” Who will crucify him for lateness. Stannis has never been late, not even when his interestingly fanatical ex-wife firebombed his townhouse, screaming that R’hllor would destroy the unbelievers.

 

“It is most fortuitous that I telephoned him to explain that you may be slightly late, yes?”

 

If at all possible to do so, Willas’ eyes widen to maximum, almost painful, hugeness. He doesn’t react to the soft kiss to the corner of his mouth as he is now free falling in horror at Stannis Baratheon taking a phone call from Oberyn explaining. Oh Gods. Explaining what? What has been said? ‘Sorry that Willas is late to work. I sucked him off and he passed out for eleven hours. Perhaps I should patent my mouth as a cure for insomnia?’ Oh Gods, this is just. No. Stannis is. And then Clegane and Bolton. And what if it gets back to Olenna, and she’ll be even more irate than his manager, and-

 

“I explained that we met before you were due in work to discuss introducing Viper bloodlines from my stud into your semen database. I wish to meet with Stannis this very morning given the dedication and passion that you displayed during our interview.” His tone softens, the arch amusement giving way to something more real, more tender if it could be described as such. “You slept, my rose. That is important, and I did not wish to wake you.”

 

“You’re lovely.” Again words. Willas wishes, quite often, that his mouth would stop just randomly blarting syllables and sentences at people, things, situations, and randy bulls. “Thank you.”

 

“You need more sleep,” Oberyn purrs, teeth finding the softness of a Tyrell earlobe. The nip makes all of the hairs on his neck stand on end, the shiver gasping from Willas’ lips. “I must make love to you with my mouth again this evening. Perhaps I shall use my fingers in you, though perhaps we must work upon your stamina before introducing prostate massage?”

 

“I have to go to work. You’re making me excited.” His work trousers aren’t built to allow erections. The zip isn’t sturdy enough.

 

“Mmm. I am most bad, am I not? You, who are so pure and good, and I, who is destined to debauch you utterly with all of my considerable skill.”

 

If anyone else said that, it could sound big-headed, overly-cocky. Oberyn, however, speaks nothing but the truth.

 

* * *

 

“Ser, this is Mr. Martell.” They turned up rather later than advertised after, well. Half-naked Oberyn is very difficult to resist when he has rescued you from the horror of being murdered for tardiness by a man such as Stannis Baratheon. Nothing more than kissing, but. Gods. What kissing. Luckily the collar of his shirt - this is the third this morning because the other one managed to get quite sweaty with them plastered together, and Oberyn does love rumpling things, it seems - hides another tiny Martell indiscretion with teeth.

 

“Stannis. How handsome you are this morning. The blue in your tie makes your eyes most storm-laden and beautiful.” Flirting with Stannis is quite unexpected. Well, not entirely unexpected because this is Oberyn. He exists in a position of perma-flirtation.

 

“Martell.”

 

“Ah, always so charmed to see me.” Oh. They know each other.

 

Stannis grits his teeth. 

 

“Mr. Tyrell. If you could bring coffee and biscuits to the interview room. Take notes when you have done so.”

 

“Yes, ser.”

 

Oberyn winks as he is removed from the office, so he cannot cause any more general mayhem just by being there.

 

“Tried to shag Baratheon, he did,” Clegane snorts from behind the bank of monitors. Why he needs three screens nobody really knows. Bolton is insanely jealous, since he is the self-proclaimed computer god of the AI/IVF office and therefore thinks he deserves all of the equipment for himself. “Fucking beautiful it was seeing the bossman dealing with that shit. Thought he was going to knock him the fuck out before that nice bastard Seaworth dove in and rescued him from being fucked to death or something.”

 

Willas makes a carefully non-committal noise and wonders if they’re out of biscuits.

 

“Good weekend?” someone hisses in his ear, or at least in the vague proximity as Bolton really is that short. He’s spattered in the usual post-Saturday bar brawl bruising, though it seems as if someone’s tried to strangle him; the collar of his band shirt, proclaiming some punk group from the ‘70s and knowing Ramsay it is actual vintage, doesn’t hide anything. It looks a bit like someone’s wrapped a collar around his throat and yanked it hard enough to leave marks.

 

“Yes. Thank you.” It is best, when faced with angry animals that might kill you, such as rampaging bulls, feisty stallions, and Ramsay Bolton, to stand very still, not make eye contact, and try and not die.

 

“Course it was.” There is something in the words, harsh and dagger-sharp. “Nice to see you out of that closet you live in,” and he does that air quote thing Jaime Lannister loves, though obviously with both hands, “you perfect Tyrell rose.”

 

“Pardon?”

 

Ramsay just grins, evilly, like a rabid badger. 

 

“I have no idea what you’re talking-”

 

“So, mystery dick pics? Here you are, Tyrell, so perfect. So put together. So nice. And you’re sexting the biggest slut in the whole of Westeros.” Circling. Oh Gods. Bolton is circling, and that’s what sharks do before they choose the weakest of the prey animals they hunt and bite them in half, and oh Gods. “If you want to get off with someone, you perfect Tyrell rose,” and that high-pitched giggle is eerie, weird pale eyes boring into Willas’ terrified ones, “don’t end up where you can be seen when people lurk in the shadows.”

 

“Oh Gods. You were? But. No. Oh Gods, Bolton. Please don’t tell-”

 

“I’ve promised not to.”

 

That’s unexpected. Willas goes to ask who, and what, and where, and how, and when, and catches the expression of the murderous dog-loving psychopath.

 

“Dondarrion thinks it’s romantic.” The expression darkens, disgusted. “We were getting drunk and talking about flaying and setting shit on fire.”

 

“How the fuck does Dondarrion lurk? He’s fucking massive.”

 

Oh Gods. Sandor. He’s eavesdropping because Bolton is in menacing mode, which indicates something interesting about to happen; while he doesn’t often intimidate people during office hours, because Bolton believes that it is best to keep his menace more chilling and less exposed for greater impact when it is released, it always brings the entire place to a complete halt. Once he tried it on Stannis, who told him off like a headmaster at some sort of public school, and from them on there has been an uneasy alliance between the two men in the office whose tempers could possibly cause another war of the Five Kings. They are just very angry, those two.

 

“You lurk, you twat.”

 

“I’m not a fucking bright ginger priest of fucking R’hllor poncy arse bandit wanker with a psycho short-arsed boyfriend.”

 

“Don’t call him short-!” Willas tries to stop him before the word spills out of Clegane’s mouth, but. Oh.

 

Oh. No.

 

“He’s not my boyfriend, Deep-Fried. He’s my bitch, like the rest of you bitches. Bitch.”

 

“Cunting fuckweasel piss-streaky cockwomble!”

 

He scurries back as the testosterone explodes into a messy screaming battle. Bolton grabs a stapler and waves it, snapping staples at lightning speed and snarling like the muscle-bound attack dog that he was in a past life. Clegane, in turn, wrenches his mouse from the back of his PC tower and whirls it around his head like some sort of medieval mace, upping his rate of swearing to approximately a fuck per second. Sandor is good at swearing. He’s probably the most talented wordsmith of rudeness in the Seven Kingdoms. The sheer invention, invective, and bitter bile-spleen anger he gets behind each punctuated word is the sort of thing lesser curse-word fans desperately would love to copy.

 

Stannis. He needs Stannis.

 

Willas judges the distance, using his cane to avoid being smacked with the mouse or impaled with a shower of staples, and manages to fling himself into the interview room. To be honest, the title is a bit jumped up for what is, in essence, a store cupboard with a few chairs, a table, and an old telephone.

 

“I am not thrilled at having to deal with you this morning, Martell. I am a very busy man. I find time in my schedule to meet with you. I find your presence irks me, considering that we-”

 

Oberyn and Stannis are also having an argument, or at least the manager is having a rant at a thoroughly amused Martell, but this seems rather more refined and less filled with office equipment. Safer. Less Ramsay. Clegane is fine. There might be cross-fire, and accidental mouse cable whipping, but it’s never personal. With Bolton, though. He just likes destroying everything when he’s having a tantrum. He starts talking in punk lyrics and invoking the anarchist spirit of Sid Vicious. Goes off about flaying, and the fury of the Dreadfort, and how he should be King in the North rather than that bitch Jon Snow.

 

No, Willas has no idea about that one.

 

“Yes, Mr. Tyrell?”

 

“Clegane called Bolton the ‘s-word.’ They’re. Well. Oh Gods. They’ve got weaponry again.”

 

Something smashes thunderously into the other side of the door, and for a moment Clegane’s scarred face smushes against the pane of glass, before he shoves off, roaring, and there is peace - at least momentarily.

 

“Does this happen often, Stannis?” Oberyn seems perfectly fine with the madness of the AI/IVF office. He grins, and is ridiculously attractive.

 

“Silence, Martell.”

 

“So commanding. So dominant.”

 

Stannis’ jaw tenses once more, and he presses his thumbs into his eye sockets, just below the beginnings of his strong eyebrows. “If you want my semen, Martell, you will keep your tongue still.”

 

It is a measure of the self-control of Willas that he doesn’t start laughing, but mostly because the trauma of having Bolton know about Oberyn, and then the fighting, and, oh. Everything. Everything crashes, in that moment, catching him at a low point, and he sighs, shoulders tensing.

 

“I must witness the fight between the tiny angry sexy one and the large angry sexy one.”

 

“Do you want to sleep with everyone in Westeros?” snaps Stannis. “Martell, you are disgusting.” 

 

“Not everyone. Just most of you. Or just one of you.”

 

Oberyn crinkles around the corners of his eyes, which gives him this wonderfully warm, caring expression, and he smiles. At Willas. Who goes scarlet and has to sit down with the sheer overwhelming everything. A smile and a suggestion of laughter lines and fondness. Straight to the groin, and those trousers are really quite upset with that, and Willas is very aware that getting an erection in the office is probably against governmental policy, like porn on computers and eating sandwiches over keyboards so the crumbs fall in and they get all messy and crunchy.

 

Baratheon squares his broad shoulders, tilts his chin to maximum disdain, and steps into the melee of madness. Oberyn follows, hands in pockets, in full saunter.

 

“Put that down, Bolton. Clegane. Stop using electrical equipment in a manner that it should not be used. Are you aware that we cannot replace yet another mouse for you? I am appalled by this. Bolton. Sit. Clegane…- That was unnecessary, Bolton.”

 

“Bolton just put a staple through Stannis’ tie,” Oberyn reports before he reaches out, offering a hand. “Come and watch, and I shall protect you.”

 

Willas wobbles over, feeling the tug in his knee, before an arm wraps easily about his waist. As if it should be there. Even if they’re in his office. With a war of stationery and office goods being waged. The room is now, apart from Willas’ desk tucked safely into the far corner, destroyed. Bolton, who is telling them all his blade are sharp, and they are all the bitches of the Dreadfort, motherfuckers, has lessened the height disadvantage by climbing on Stannis’ usually pristine desk, lashing out with his steel-toed Doc Martens that be always wears. Clegane now sports a keyboard as a shield, using the flex of the mouse to lash at his enemy’s face.

 

Stannis.

 

Stannis is about to explode. The colour that Baratheon turns is akin to a very good Dornish port, Willas adds, idly, before remembering the blow job of the evening before and contemplating how Oberyn’s hand has slipped, caressingly, to cup his backside.

 

“This is splendid. Why have you never told me that your workplace is so exciting, sweet one?”

 

“Incoming!” They duck as a thankfully not china mug - Stannis believes in travel accessories since he goes hiking with a friend once a month, and likes to promote healthy lifestyles around the office - sails over their heads and explodes in a shower of tea. They are hit, slightly, by the rebounding liquid, but at least as shrapnel goes, it is pleasingly not skin-renting.

 

Something pings.

 

The lift. Someone’s in the lift. Willas, horror-struck, can only watch as the heavy doors creak open and two men, chattering warmly, step into the chaos.

 

“What the-?”

 

“By R’hllor.”

 

The saviours, the superheroes they deserve. The diamonds in the rough. The breaking of dawn after a long, frozen night.

 

Davos Seaworth and Beric Dondarrion. 

 

“I’ll get Stannis, lad, and you sort Ramsay out.”

 

They split, and take to their tasks with the vigour of men on a mission.

 

“Alright Stannis?” Davos claps a hand upon the man’s perfectly suited shoulder, rubbing lightly. All friendly, and warm, and for a moment it seems as if Baratheon might just erupt anyway, but for some reason seeing the union representative brings him down, just slightly, from the edge. He remembers to breathe, the red quietly leeching back to the usual slightly grey pallor that indicates too much work, not enough quality time, and forgetting to eat. They all have their vices here. Willas and wine. Stannis seems to think he can survive on ascetic choices, rampant hiking, and starvation. Bolton runs on sheer malice, and Clegane on angry swearing. They all are a bit screwed up, to be honest, the whole bloody lot of them.

 

“Ramsay?” Beric is almost the same height as Ramsay, even if Bolton still stands upon that desk.

 

“Fuck off, priest! I’m going to flay the bitch where he stands!”

 

“Don’t be a dick, mate. Think of Myrri - she needs her Daddy to not be sacked so you can spoil her rotten, doesn’t she? Uncle Beric can’t buy her new collars every week on a priest wage, can he? C’mon, Ramsay. Down you come.”

 

Something clicks. Something in the words, and wordlessly Ramsay steps off the desk, relinquishes his stapler to Dondarrion’s massive freckled hand, and seems content to just snarl at Clegane who, since he has some modicum of self-control, just plugs his mouse back into the computer, reboots, settles at his desk.

 

“Bolton has a child?” Oberyn looks perturbed by the idea. 

 

“She’s a dog. An actual dog, I’m not being insulting, that’d be horrid, wouldn’t it? Calling a child a dog. Though some dogs are lovely, and Myranda is a sweet little thing.”

 

“Ah. Explains everything.” Oberyn kisses Willas on the temple, as if it is an perfectly appropriate thing to be doing. In the office. With five other people there. Who all just stop, turn as one, and boggle.

 

“Closeted.”

 

“Be nice, Ramsay. It’s adorable.” Dondarrion’s hand rests, huge and controlling, on the nape of Bolton’s bruised neck.

 

“...fine. Whatever.” 

 

“Um. Right.” Everyone waits patiently for an explanation, including Oberyn who has no idea about why this office battle occurred, and therefore it is up to Willas to fill everyone in, which is horribly embarrassing, and he finds himself flailing. “Okay. Apparently Bolton saw us, at the party, and he said things, and then Clegane stepped in because he couldn’t believe that Beric could lurk, and then Sandor called Ramsay short, so they started fighting.”

 

A growl. Bolton always reacts to that word, even if it isn’t pointed at him.

 

“Sorry, Ramsay, I’m not calling you short, I’m just reiterating the facts of what happened. So I managed to get into the interview room, where I informed Mr. Baratheon of what was happening, and he tried to defuse the situation, and then took a staple to the tie.”

 

Seaworth winces, gives Stannis a comforting pat on the back.

 

“So, obviously Mr. Baratheon was rather furious about that, because I must say that’s a really nice tie, ser, I’m sure that it’ll come out in the wash. I got absolutely covered in semen last week, and managed to rescue mine, so maybe take it to a dry cleaner? I didn’t take mine because, oh Gods, imagine the explanation I’d have to give-?”

 

A soft cough in his ear, a faint smirk from Oberyn.

 

“I’m digressing. Sorry. Anyway. Then the lift doors opened, and we all witnessed what happened next. I think that’s it?”

 

“And you’re sleeping with Oberyn Martell,” Bolton adds, unnecessarily acidic about everything, but chafing at the yoke of Beric Dondarrion’s sensible presence. Always the last word, with that one, even against someone who isn’t even properly involved in the fighting.

 

“Of course he is,” Stannis snaps. “It is obvious. I remind you, Bolton, that this is an equal opportunity office, and whatever gender, race, and sexuality a colleague has, it is never to be spoken of in disparaging tones, or used as a weapon against them. I refer you to Article IV, clause XII, paragraph 1.7a regarding the treatment of coworkers, and I also advise you to review appendix 21.9 subsection 4 in order to remind yourself of how you should purport yourself within the workplace. I am contemplating inviting you to a formal stage one interview in regards to you ‘outing’ Mr. Tyrell, when it is obvious that his sexuality is nothing to do with you, or his employer, whatsoever.”

 

Baratheon sniffs, blue eyes boring into Ramsay’s pale ones, and they manage ten seconds of power struggle before Dondarrion taps Bolton on the shoulder, muttering something into the ball-of-hate’s ear.

 

Ramsay breaks first, stares at his feet, seething, but mumbles something that almost sounds like an apology.

 

“How the fuck did you two bastards end up here?” Clegane finds the usual packet of post office war Hob Nobs, opens them, hands them around.

 

“R’hllor told me,” Dondarrion says, mystically.

 

“I was just bringing in more facts about fish.” Under Seaworth’s tattooed arm is another, beautifully bound, folder. “Never too many facts about fish.”

 

Stannis rubs his face. “Clegane, Bolton. Take a half-day. I shall remove it from your flexi allowances. Dondarrion. Thank you. Please email me an address to send a donation to the temple in appreciation for your efforts today, even if it pains me to do so - you still owe part of the financial reparations after what happened with Selyse. Martell, Tyrell. Take the rest of the day off.”

 

“Oberyn doesn’t work for you, Stannis.” Seaworth shakes his head. 

 

“Then just take the day off anyway. Seaworth. Leave your folder on Tyrell’s desk. He will look at it in the morning. Take me out to lunch. I need a pint and a new hiking mug. Mine is...broken.”

 

“...who broke your mug?” Davos is a lovely man. He’s kind, and caring, and really wants fish to be conserved and eaten in a loving, responsible manner. Sure, he’s been in prison a few times, and some might say he’s just a nobody from Flea Bottom who used his cheerful nature and sense to rise from the sewers to being the militant unionist that management and the Red Keep fear, but he’s a good sort with a warm heart.

 

The note of disappointment in his voice with finding out that Stannis’ mug has been sacrificed to the Goddess of Inter-office scuffling?

 

Even Dondarrion looks uncomfortable, and he’s unflappable about everything.

 

“Bolton did. He threw it at the wall.” Stannis sulks, spectacularly.

 

“Well.” Seaworth approaches the psychopath. “That wasn’t very nice, was it? That was a dead nice mug, that I got him, and I really don’t appreciate you doing that.”

 

“...”

 

“So, with your afternoon off, you’re going to the hiking shop and buying a replacement. I’ll write it down, so you know which shop and which cup. Me and him can’t go hiking without Stannis’ travel mug. How’s he supposed to have a nice cuppa when you’ve broke it? Sure, it’s made of plastic, but the Thermos glass inside will be not worth looking at. Really, mate, I’m disappointed in you. I thought we were alright, you and me? You know, both liking punk, and you remind me of the lads back at the picket lines in the ‘80s, all strong and full of conviction. But, Ramsay, you can’t go ‘round breaking people’s mugs. That’s not fair, is it? Stannis wouldn’t break your stuff, he’d not rip that X-Ray Specs shirt, and that’s original, isn’t it? You love that shirt, don’t you? And Stannis really loves his mug, and now you’ve ruined it for him. Really, lad. I’m sad to see you stoop to it, to be honest.”

 

“...s’ry.” Dondarrion doesn’t even have to step in this time. Ramsay looks at his boots, shuffling.

 

“There’s a good lad. Now,” and he scribbles, left-handedly and quite illegibly, on a Post-It pad. “That’s the shop and the mug. Black, if possible, or the black and yellow one. I tried to get the black and yellow one, but they sold out last time.”

 

“I’ll take him straight there, Mr. Seaworth.” Dondarrion smiles, all fire and passion and attractive eye-patch, though with less brightness than usual. The impact of being gently lectured by an ex-con with an obsession with fish and hiking is quite disconcerting, even for those not being targeted.

 

“Come on, Stannis. Let’s get you a bacon sandwich. When was the last time you ate, eh? You’re looking too thin. I’ll get you a bit of cake, as well, if you want, and that nice IPA you like. Want to go  _ The Mayflower _ ? Bit of a trek, but it’ll be proper lunchtime by the time we’re there, and Tyrion’ll be pleased to see us.”

 

"Pleased to see you, you mean. He makes his dislike for me rather plain."

 

Davos merely smiles.

 

* * *

 

“Is it always so strange, in your office?”

 

“To be honest, that was quite odd, even for us.” Willas spears a scampi, wonders for the umpteenth time if it is made of Davos Seaworth’s sustainable fish stocks, or if shellfish are not covered in his well-written and actually very compelling dossier, and munches on it thoughtfully.

 

Oberyn has something squid-ink black, some sort of risotto. It looks quite unappetising, but a fork is waved at him full of calamari and rice, and of course he has to try it. Part of him winces at being seen by others, since having a terribly attractive Dornishman feeding him bites off his plate is quite, well, couple-y. Very couple-y. Friends just squabble and use their own forks if they’re sharing. They do not wrap their lips around cutlery that has been in the mouth of their companion and wonder if they kiss they’d both taste of squid.

 

Public displays of affection are, for Willas, quite the alien concept. Perhaps he is repressed in that sort of way, or those two boyfriends never could be bothered. Actually, probably that. He quite likes the romantic side of things, after all.

 

“Oberyn?”

 

“Yes, sweet boy?”

 

“What is this?”

 

The eternal question.

 

“We are eating lunch, Willas. That is what this is.”

 

“You know what I mean.” He hopes Oberyn does, because it needs discussing, preferably in public, because if they’re in private they’ll end up drinking, touching, going to bed, all of those things that deflect from the very important ‘are we dating or not’ thing that’s been plaguing Willas for, well, a day and a half.

 

Oberyn, because he’s Dornish and they drink wine with everything, reaches for his glass, contemplating Willas with those devastating dark eyes.

 

“I like you. Very much.”

 

There has to be a but. There must.

 

“But?” Prompting.

 

“There is no but. You are a unique man, with a delicate beauty who needs someone who appreciates his personality, his charm, his differences. One who is molded by others, yet fights to be himself, who deserves to be what he wishes to be, and still feels he needs to be allowed this by another person. Freed, perhaps? A kind, sweet, thoughtful boy. A funny boy. A charming boy. Delightful and lovely, who is adrift in the seas of the world.”

 

“I’m twenty eight,” he reminds Oberyn, blushing so very hot that it feels as if his ears are about to spontaneously combust.

 

“A man in body, yet young and gentle and inquisitive of spirit. Youthful forever, like that boy in the book. Even when you are old, Willas, you will be young.”

 

“You’re just terribly nice to me,” he mumbles, snagging a chip to do something with his hands rather than wave them around like an octopus.

 

“Ah, I have ulterior motives.” Oberyn offers a fried squid ring, and Willas takes it. “I want you. Body and soul and mind. I want to make love to you, over and over. I want to break your conditioning, watch you grow into the spectacular rose in bloom - you are but a bud, full of potential, never allowed to flower into what you deserve to be. I want to watch your grandmother’s expression as she finds us in that conservatory where she berated you most harshly, devouring each other, displaying what you are to the world. What you deserve to be. What you must be, sweet one. Also, you are beautiful, and charmingly strange, and unlike any who I have ever met. Such a mind, and manner, and hidden depths. I think, sweet Willas, that underneath that innocence you desire many many things. Naughty, delicious, filthy things. You learn, you absorb, you wish to understand. A scientist’s need for experimentation. Perhaps I see in you someone that will allow me my perversions, and embrace them himself?”

 

“Oh. Gods.”

 

“How lovely you are when you are shocked into blasphemy. I wish to crawl underneath this table cloth and take you in my mo-”

 

“Excuse me,” Willas manages to croak at a passing waiter. “Could we have the bill? Sorry. Thank you. Sorry.”

 

Oberyn, who is shameless, grins broadly and finishes his risotto, long strong hands elegant upon the silverware and his glass of wine.

 

“What am I getting myself into?” Shivering, and heat-prickly, he can’t consider eating the rest of his lunch. How can Oberyn eat at a time like this? “Also, people don’t know. That I’m. You know.” Leaning forward, flustered. “I like not-women.”

 

“Apart from your sister, probably Loras as he is most intelligent with his gay-dar considering his love-making, Stannis Baratheon, Sandor Clegane and therefore his pretty little Sansa, the Bolton boy and the Red Priest, the far too lovely Davos Seaworth-”

 

“Apart from them.” If Beric knows, and everyone in King’s Landing knows he’s an awful gossip, the entire continent will hear the news by tomorrow morning.

 

“You get me,” Oberyn adds, simply. “Me, and everything that involves me, my perfect Tyrell rose. Is that adequate?”

 

The precipice looms. Safety, or flinging himself into space, into the unknown, like some sort of mad parachutist who isn’t sure they’ve packed the chute properly, of if the safety one is even in the bag, and he’s not sure what lies under the cloud cover, but it could be paradise, or a massive range of very sharp pointy rocks waiting to impale foolish people who jump off cliffs even with the right equipment.

 

Willas swallows. Considers.

 

Steps off the cliff.

 

His hand, trembling, crawls across the white table cloth and nestles, slightly damp and nervous, into Oberyn’s warm, comforting grasp.

 

“Olenna will kill me.”

 

“She shall not. I will not allow it.” 

 

He finishes his wine with a long swallow, Willas admiring the olive skin, the stubble, the dip of collarbones above the always too low buttoned shirt. The glass, relinquished, is placed upon the table, and then those soft, slightly purple-tinted lips brush lightly over the soft skin of Willas’ inner wrist. The moustache tickles, teasing and tempting, and the warmth of the man’s breath is heart-shattering, and he finds himself panting, helpless and aroused and he knows this is right, this is what he’s wanted his entire life, because sod Olenna, and his destiny, and everything else. Because this is what Willas needs

 

“I will keep you safe from her anger, Willas. After all, your grandmother is merely a woman related to you by blood. I, sweet one, am Oberyn Martell.”

 

“Who I chose.” He had a choice. Oh Gods. That’s mad. He, Willas Tyrell, was able to make a decision and hang the consequences! Hang them stone-dead!

 

“Who you chose.” Oberyn rubs his cheek into Willas’ fingers, like a sweet tabby cat with his long claws sheathed in velvet.

 

“Thank you.”

 

“For what, sweet one?” 

 

Willas traces patterns on the pristine white table cloth with a trembling finger, looking up through his eyelashes. “For sending your photo to the wrong number.”

 

“No. No, Willas.” Lips, and softness, and stubble, and kisses to the centre of his palm now, in full view, and there are people watching, and Willas is flying on adrenaline, and soppiness, and the sheer fact he is being touched by someone who is willing to help him fight battles that he never even knew needed to be fought, who appreciates all his weird little quirks, who is the most wonderful man in Westeros. “Fate is fickle. I believe in her, pretty rose. She had me send my message to the correct number. The right one. To you.”

 

* * *

 


End file.
